We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Increased natural killer cell activity correlates with low or negative expression of the HER-2/neu oncogene in patients with breast cancer.
- Authors
Wiltschke, C.; Tyl, E.; Speiser, P.; Steininger, A.; Zeillinger, R.; Kury, F.; Czerwenka, K.; Kubista, E.; Preis, P.; Krainer, M.; Zielinski, Christoph C.
- Abstract
<bold>Background: </bold>Increased expression of the HER-2/neu oncogene in breast cancer correlates with decreased estrogen receptor concentration and seems to be an important prognostic factor. The authors investigated whether there is a correlation between HER-2/neu expression and immunologic parameters representing tumor defense in patients with breast cancer.<bold>Method: </bold>A Western blot analysis was used to investigate HER-2/neu expression, whereas a chromium-release assay using the K562 cell line as target was used to measure natural killer (NK) cell activity.<bold>Results: </bold>In patients with breast cancer, NK cell activity was significantly higher compared with patients with benign tumors (P = 0.006) or healthy control subjects (P = 0.002). Moreover, 23.3% of patients with breast cancer showed an overexpression of HER-2/neu protein. Within this group of patients, NK cell activity was significantly lower (45.6 +/- 16.1%) compared with the group with no HER-2/neu overexpression (57.3 +/- 11.0%). NK cell activity did not increase in patients with HER-2/neu overexpression. Thus, there was a statistically significant correlation of cytolytic effector cell function with HER-2/neu expression of the tumor (P = 0.003), and HER-2/neu overexpression correlated with a negative estrogen receptor status (P = 0.005).<bold>Conclusion: </bold>These data add further evidence to previous observations from the authors' laboratory that certain tumor characteristics may be associated with reactions of the host with breast cancer.
- Publication
Cancer (0008543X), 1994, Vol 73, Issue 1, p135
- ISSN
0008-543X
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1002/1097-0142(19940101)73:1<135::AID-CNCR2820730123>3.0.CO;2-S