Relationship between erb-B2 mRNA Expression in Blood and Tissue of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Breast Cancer Patients and Clinicopathological Characteristics of the Tumors.

Neda Moazzezy,Mana Oloomi,Saeid Bouzari,Fatemeh Ebrahimi,Hossein Yahyazadeh,Mahsa Mollapour Sisakht

doi:10.7314/apjcp.2016.17.1.249

Abstract

Molecular detection methods such as RT-PCR for detecting breast cancer-associated gene expression in the peripheral blood have the potential to modify breast cancer (BC) staging and therapy. In this regard, we evaluated the potential of erb-B2 molecular marker in BC detection and analyzed the expression of erb-B2 mRNA in the peripheral blood and fresh tissue samples of 50 pretreated female BC patients and 50 healthy females by reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) method. We also assessed the correlation of erb-B2 mRNA marker positivity in peripheral blood and tumor tissue samples with clinical and pathological factors in BC patients in order to evaluate its prognostic value. It was shown that there is a significant difference between healthy females and BC patients with expression of the erb-B2 molecular marker (p<0.01). A significant difference between the expression of erb-B2 in the peripheral blood and tissue samples of BC patients (p<0.01) and the frequency of circulating erb-B2 mRNA expression in peripheral blood and in tissue was detected by RT-PCR. No correlation was found between erb-B2 mRNA expression in blood or tumor tissue samples and lymph node, tumor grade, tumor stage, tumor size, patient's age, ki67, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PGR), P53, and HER-2 status. However, in a small subset of 31 BC patients we found that expression of erb-B2 in peripheral blood or in both peripheral blood and tumor tissue was directly correlated with lympho-vascular invasion and perineural invasion as poor prognostic features. The highest rates of erb-B2 expression in peripheral blood or tumor tissue were in the ER and PR negative and HER-2 positive group. This study suggests that the application of the RT-PCR and immunohistochemical methods for erb-B2 molecular marker detection would provide a higher detection rate, especially in early stage BC.

Highlights

One of the most common cancers among Iranian women that can be caused mortality is breast cancer (BC) and the incidence of this dilemma is currently increasing (Taghavi et al, 2012)
We evaluate the potential of erb-B2 molecular marker in BC detection and analyzed the expression of erb-B2 mRNA in the peripheral blood of female BC patients and normal subjects by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) method
The erb-B2 mRNA expression was observed in a number of normal subjects, the results of our study demonstrate that there was a significant difference between normal subjects and BC patients with the expression of erb-B2 molecular marker (p

Summary

Introduction

One of the most common cancers among Iranian women that can be caused mortality is breast cancer (BC) and the incidence of this dilemma is currently increasing (Taghavi et al, 2012). Detection of circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood is considered as useful tools for early diagnosis and may improve the early detection rate of BC patients (Ross et al, 2009). Molecular biology based techniques such as reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) can be used for cancer specific gene transcripts (tumor cell markers) in the blood that are sensitive and specific for the detection of BC (Gilbey et al, 2004). Human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 or HER2 ( called c-erbB2) is a tissue biomarker that acts as a networking receptor and mediates signaling to cancer cells, causing them to proliferate (Wang et al, 2015). In addition to early detection, research about tumor molecular profiles can be improved patient prognosis and care (Yan et al, 2015)

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