Wiltschke C, Tyl E, Speiser P, Steininger A, Zeillinger R, Kury F, Czerwenka K, Kubista E, Preis P, Krainer M
First Department of Internal Medicine, University Hospital, Vienna, Austria.
Cancer. 1994 Jan 1;73(1):135-9. doi: 10.1002/1097-0142(19940101)73:1<135::aid-cncr2820730123>3.0.co;2-s.
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.
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.
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).
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.
乳腺癌中HER-2/neu癌基因表达增加与雌激素受体浓度降低相关，似乎是一个重要的预后因素。作者研究了乳腺癌患者中HER-2/neu表达与代表肿瘤防御的免疫参数之间是否存在相关性。
采用蛋白质免疫印迹分析来研究HER-2/neu表达，而使用K562细胞系作为靶细胞的铬释放试验来测量自然杀伤（NK）细胞活性。
与良性肿瘤患者（P = 0.006）或健康对照者（P = 0.002）相比，乳腺癌患者的NK细胞活性显著更高。此外，23.3%的乳腺癌患者显示HER-2/neu蛋白过表达。在这组患者中，NK细胞活性显著低于无HER-2/neu过表达的组（45.6 +/- 16.1%）（57.3 +/- 11.0%）。HER-2/neu过表达的患者NK细胞活性并未增加。因此，溶细胞效应细胞功能与肿瘤的HER-2/neu表达之间存在统计学上的显著相关性（P = 0.003），并且HER-2/neu过表达与雌激素受体阴性状态相关（P = 0.005）。
这些数据为作者实验室之前的观察结果提供了进一步的证据，即某些肿瘤特征可能与乳腺癌宿主的反应有关。
