Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2012 Jun;8(6):703-11.
doi: 10.2217/fon.12.57.

Signatures of tumor-immune interactions as biomarkers for breast cancer prognosis

Masoud H Manjili  1 , Kayvan Najarian, Xiang-Yang Wang
Affiliations
Review

Signatures of tumor-immune interactions as biomarkers for breast cancer prognosis

Masoud H Manjili et al. Future Oncol. 2012 Jun.

Abstract

Breast cancer mortality is usually due to distant recurrence of cancer at an advanced stage of the disease rather than from primary cancer. Therefore, prediction of breast cancer recurrence at the time of diagnosis could lead to advances in personalized treatment of cancer patients in order to prevent risk of recurrence. Two prognostic biomarkers that are currently being used in clinical practice are a 70-gene MammaPrint signature and a 21-gene Oncotype DX panel. These assays generate relative risks of recurrence, but they do not provide a 'yes' or 'no' answer about recurrence in a given patient. These tests include genes that are involved in the cell cycle, invasion, metastasis and angiogenesis related to breast cancer. Emerging evidence suggests that a signature of genes involved in tumor-immune interactions may provide a more accurate prognostic tool. This paper reviews recent advances in the discovery of prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer patients.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Development of breast cancer biomarkers
ER: Estrogen receptor; GGI: Genomic grade index; PR: Progesterone receptor.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Carr JA, Havstad S, Zarbo RJ, Divine G, Mackowiak P, Velanovich V. The association of HER2/neu amplification with breast cancer recurrence. Arch. Surg. 2000;135(12):1469–1474. - PubMed
    1. Roses RE, Paulson EC, Sharma A, et al. HER2/neu overexpression as a predictor for the transition from in situ to invasive breast cancer. Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2009;18(5):1386–1389. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Addressed prognostic significance of HER2 by resolving the discordance between ductal carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma in the frequency of HER2 overexpression.
    1. Kmieciak M, Knutson KL, Dumur CI, Manjili MH. HER2/neu antigen loss and relapse of mammary carcinoma are actively induced by T cell-mediated anti-tumor immune responses. Eur. J. Immunol. 2007;37(3):675–685. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Showed that HER2 is not an independent predictor of recurrence because T-cell responses can induce HER2 loss and result in the relapse of a more aggressive HER2-negative tumor.

Substances