This 22-year-old patient initially diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast was found to be negative for estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor and positive for human epidermal growth factor receptor in the immunohistochemical examination.
Strong adverse effect of epidermal growth factor receptor 2 overexpression on prognosis of patients with invasive lobular breast cancer: a comparative study with invasive ductal breast cancer in Chinese population.
CK19, CK20 and EGFR gene expression profiles were evaluated in the blood samples of 84 female patients with primary invasive ductal breast cancer and 20 healthy female volunteers using SYBR green-based real-time qPCR assays.
Among all the aberrant cytogenetic locations detected, 20q13, 7p12.3 approximately p12.1, and 17q23.2 approximately q25.3, which contain among others, genes for TNFRSF6B, EGFR, and TK1 showed statistically significant gains (P < or = 0.01) in 83, 66.7, and 50% of the HER2+ IDCA cases, respectively.
All tumors with Her-2/neu:EGFR ratios greater than 2 contained an infiltrating ductal carcinoma component, whereas all infiltrating pure lobular carcinomas had Her-2/ neu:EGFR ratios that were less than 2.
The results indicated two subgroups of invasive ductal carcinoma; 1) HER-2/neu overexpressing cases that were negative forEGFR expression and had low proliferation fraction, and a tetraploid DNA pattern (22 cases), and 2) other combinations of HER-2/neu expression and EGFR expression, with a high proliferation fraction and an aneuploid DNA pattern (38 cases).