Chromosome band 17q21 in breast cancer: Significant association between beclin 1 loss and HER2/NEU amplification

✍ Scribed by Tiziana Negri; Eva Tarantino; Marta Orsenigo; James F. Reid; Manuela Gariboldi; Milvia Zambetti; Marco A. Pierotti; Silvana Pilotti

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 241 KB
• Volume: 49
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1045-2257
• DOI: 10.1002/gcc.20798

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Treatment success of breast cancer patients with trastuzumab alone or in combination depends not only on HER2/NEU amplification but also on PTEN and PI3K status and efficient cell death programs. In this pilot study, we found a significant association between loss of beclin 1 and HER2/NEU amplification (both on 17q21) in breast cancers. This finding was confirmed in two public copy number microarray datasets. Furthermore, there is a trend associating beclin 1 loss with TP53 mutations, PI3KCA gene gain, and PTEN mutations. Finally, the observation that beclin 1 gene loss predicted a response to trastuzumab alone or in combination with other drugs is worthy of further confirmation in larger cohorts. Our results suggest that, beclin 1 loss may contribute to genome instability and to a defective autophagy that may lead to tumoral cell death in presence of competent apoptosis or senescence pathways. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.