English

DTIC ADA296100: Development of Anti-Idiotype Monoclonal Antibodies for the Treatment of Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer is a major cause of cancer deaths in women. The incidence of breast cancer has steadily increased over the last two decades and patients with recurrent disease are not curable by standard therapies. In human breast cancer,amplification and overexpression of the cell membrane protein HER2/neu, which is not present on normal breast tissue, has been observed to occur in a significant number of tumors. In 189 primary human breast cancers, HER2/neu was found to be amplified from 2 to over 20 fold in 30% of the tumors (1) Patients with multiple copies of the HER2/neu gene in DNA from their tumors had a shorter time to relapse as well as a shorter overall survival (1-3), indicating that HEK2/neu gene amplification was prognostic for both disease behavior and clinical outcome in these patients. Not only were increased copy numbers of HER2/neu in breast cancers related to a poorer prognosis, but gene amplification of HER2/neu correlated with lymph node involvement (1- 5), histological grade (5,6), negative estrogen receptor content (7,8), early recurrence (4,7), increased mitotic activity (9), all of which are considered to be poor prognostic indicators. In a retrospective stu

Sign in with your free account to read, download EPUBs or listen.