0000000001164399

AUTHOR

Cecilia Dolcemascolo

Target therapy in HER2-overexpressing breast cancer patients.

The development of new therapeutic strategies, such as monoclonal antibodies directed against human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2), has offered new hopes for women with early breast cancer whose tumors overexpress HER2. We retrospectively analyzed the population-based data of Breast Cancer Registry of Palermo in 2004-2006, and selected 1401 invasive breast cancer cases, nonmetastatic at diagnosis, having HER2/neu oncogene expression determined. We have correlated this information to age, tumor stage at diagnosis (TNM), nodal involvement, and receptor status (ER and PgR). Survival analysis was conducted dividing the patients in two different groups according to date of diagnosis: …

research product

Application of a new classification to a breast tumor series from a population-based cancer registry: demographic, clinical, and prognostic features of incident cases, Palermo Province, 2002-2004 .

A new classification based on gene expression profiling or immunohistochemical (IHC) characteristics may replace current histopathological classifications and predict better clinical outcomes. We used IHC markers to classify incident cases ascertained by the Palermo Breast Cancer Registry (2002-2004) into four subtypes: luminal-A (ER+ or PgR+ and HER2/neu-); luminal-B (ER+ or PgR+, HER2/neu+); basal-like (ER-, PgR-, HER2/neu-); and HER2+/ER- (HER2/neu+, ER-, PgR-). We evaluated HER2/neu, ER and PgR in 1300/1985 (65%) cases. The most common IHC-subtype was luminal-A (68%), whereas luminal-B, basal-like, and HER2+/ER- accounted for 14%, 13%, and 5%, respectively. IHC-subtypes were not associa…

research product