Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P04626 (erbB-2)
 5,251 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The aim of laboratory diagnostics in oncology is to improve the clinical outcome of cancer by allowing earlier detection. Molecular knowledge of cancer should increase the number of risk and prognostic factors and will allow development of methods for detection and elimination of even very small tumors. Thus, the race for the specific tumor antigen in peripheral blood and the race for the blood-borne cancer cell happened simultaneously. The direct detection of the cells which have the highest probability to harbor all the properties mandatory to be life-threatening, conceivably metastatic, would be the most promising way to find the target structure of malignancy. Methods applying enrichment techniques based on density, morphology, tissue specific protein and tumor-associated protein detection enabled multi-parametric analysis of those blood-borne cancer cells. In exemplary studies it was demonstrated that the count of cell clusters positive for the tissue-specific proteins cytokeratin and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) from the peripheral blood of prostate cancer patients and a combination of a tissue-specific protein, a oncogenic receptor protein cytokeratin and p185(c-erbB-2) from the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients is related to the stage of the diseases. Breast cancer patients who presented with cytokeratin/p185(c-erbB-2) positive cell clusters showed a decrease of those cells under adriamycin adjuvant therapy. Nevertheless, additional molecular markers are required to characterize the functional properties of blood-borne cancer cells. Therefore, the genome of the cells can be investigated using a procedure for indirectly detecting aberrations of defined gene locations, i.e. multiplex microsatellite polymerase chain reaction. Up to now, the methods applied to the separation of blood-borne cancer cells are time-consuming and rather expensive. They consist of an initial enrichment step of density gradient centrifugation or buffy coat preparation followed by a specific isolation step using superparamagnetic microbeads coupled to antibodies, filter techniques or multi-parametric flow cytometry. Novel technologies have to be applied using miniaturization, integration and parallel-processing techniques based on those used in the computer industry to overcome the drawbacks.
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PMID:Predictive laboratory diagnostics in oncology utilizing blood-borne cancer cells--current best practice and unmet needs. 1116 85

We measured tumor-associated proteins (TAPs) and pollutants in blood, serum, and urine of 200 nonsmoking women 50-65 years of age, residing in the rural municipality of Peer or in Hoboken or Wilrijk, industrial suburbs of Antwerp, Belgium. Persons with occupational exposures or commuting to other towns were excluded. Residents from Hoboken had significantly higher levels of blood lead and serum zinc and polychlorinated biphenyls. Surprisingly, residents of Peer had significantly higher levels of serum cadmium, dioxin-like activity in blood fat, and urinary 1-hydroxypyrene. For 5 of the 12 TAPs assessed in this study, we observed significant differences in serum levels among residents of the three municipalities after adjusting for personal or lifestyle parameters. Although we found levels of internal exposure to pollutants to be quite homogeneous in Flanders, we found significantly higher levels of TAPs only in the industrial suburbs. In multiple regression with all 29 available personal, lifestyle, and internal exposure parameters, blood lead levels showed a positive association with serum levels of anti-p53, carcino-embryonic antigen (CEA), and tissue polypeptide-specific antigen (TPS) and with an index for mean TAP level (I(tap)); dioxin-like activity in serum and serum copper showed a positive association with serum CA 125 (cancer antigen 125); and serum zinc showed a positive association with serum levels of c-erbB-2 ectodomain and TPS. An index of internal exposure showed a positive association with serum levels of both CEA and anti-p53 and with I(tap). This study provides some evidence that levels of internal exposure such as those present in Flanders, in particular concerning lead, are indeed associated with biologic effects.
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PMID:Differences in tumor-associated protein levels among middle-age Flemish women in association with area of residence and exposure to pollutants. 1675 90

We questioned whether the incidence or magnitude of the humoral or cellular immune response to the self-tumor antigen HER-2/neu is influenced by the level of HER-2/neu protein overexpression as defined by immunohistochemical staining of tumors in breast cancer patients. We obtained peripheral blood from 104 women with stage II, III, and IV pathologically confirmed HER-2/neu-overexpressing breast cancer. Patients were categorized with +1 (n = 14), +2 (n = 20), or +3 (n = 70) HER-2/neu overexpression by institutional pathologic report. Circulating antibodies to HER-2/neu were evaluated using ELISA. T-cell responses to HER-2/neu were measured using an antigen-specific tritiated thymidine incorporation assay. Eighty-two percent of subjects with HER-2/neu antibodies were +3 overexpressors compared with 18% +2 overexpressors and 0% +1 overexpressors, a highly significant difference (P < 0.001), and there were significant differences in the magnitude of the HER-2/neu-specific antibodies between groups with varying HER-2/neu protein expression (P = 0.022). In addition, 65% of subjects with HER-2/neu-specific T cells were +3 overexpressors compared with 16% +2 overexpressors and 19% +1 overexpressors (P = 0.001). Data presented here indicate that endogenous HER-2/neu-specific humoral and T-cell immunity is greater in patients with +3 protein overexpression in their tumors than in patients with lower levels of HER-2/neu expression. Overexpression of a self-tumor-associated protein is a potential mechanism by which immunogenicity is enhanced and may aid in the identification of biologically relevant proteins to target for immune-based molecular cancer therapies.
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PMID:Level of HER-2/neu protein expression in breast cancer may affect the development of endogenous HER-2/neu-specific immunity. 1831 34