1. Exon 8 amplification of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in invasive breast carcinomas.
- Author
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Souka E, Alexiadis E, Theohari I, Giannopoulou I, Papadimitriou C, and Nakopoulou L
- Subjects
- Biomarkers, Tumor, Breast Neoplasms pathology, Exons, Female, Gene Amplification, Genes, erbB-1, Humans, Immunohistochemistry, Neoplasm Invasiveness, Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction, Breast Neoplasms genetics, ErbB Receptors genetics
- Abstract
Aims: The rate of EGFR amplification in breast cancer ranges between 0% and 15%. Recent studies have focused on the amplification status of cytosine-adenine (CA) repeats in intron 1 of the gene and correlated it with increased EGFR protein. The aim of this study was to investigate, for the first time, the significance of coding exon 8 amplification of EGFR in invasive breast cancer., Methods and Results: We investigated, by means of real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR), the amplification status of exon 8 of the EGFR gene in 148 paraffin-embedded tissue sections, 115 with invasive breast carcinoma and 33 controls. Immunohistochemistry was utilized to detect EGFR and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were performed for the evaluation of our results. EGFR amplification was observed in 7.8% of the patients, and EGFR was immunodetected in 9.6%. EGFR amplification was correlated positively with EGFR expression (P < 0.0001), HER2 expression (P = 0.023), coexpression of EGFR/HER2 (P < 0.0001) and nuclear grade (P = 0.047), and inversely with ER protein expression (P = .047)., Conclusion: It appears that amplification of the coding sequence exon 8 exhibits similar biological behaviour to amplification of the regulatory sequence in intron 1, leading to elevated levels of EGFR protein., (© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.)
- Published
- 2012
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