Immunohistochemical study of c-erbB-2 proto-oncogene product in prostatic cancer

Abstract

The c-erbB-2 proto-oncogene product is expressed in adenocarcinomas of breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and its significance as a prognostic factor has been increasingly noted. We immunohistochemically studied the expression of c-erbB-2 proto-oncogene product using anti-c-erbB-2 gene product polyclonal antibody (Nichirei), which was produced using a synthetic peptide at the C-terminal portion as the immunogen. The subjects consisted of 52 patients with prostatic cancer who were treated at the Department of Urology, Shiga University of Medical Science, from 1982 to 1990. The expression of c-erbB-2 gene was observed in 40 of the 52 patients (76.9%). The positive rate was highest in patients with poorly differentiated cancer and in stage D2 patients, but there were no significant differences in positive rates among patients with different histological types or clinical stages. The probability that progression would occur was significantly (p < 0.05) lower in the group that tested positive for c-erbB-2 than in the group that tested negative among 33 stage D2 patients after 5 years of treatment. When cause specific survival rates were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method, the group that tested positive had a significantly (p < 0.001) poorer outcome than the group that tested negative after 3 years and 6 months of treatment. The above results suggest that c-erbB-2 expression in prostatic cancer may be useful in predicting the prognosis of the disease.