Expression and Significance of CYR61 Expression in Breast Cancer Tumor Specimens
Abstract
Tamoxifen is a common antiestrogen used for the treatment of numerous breast cancer patients, as well as a chemopreventive treatment for the high-risk population. Many breast tumors that initially respond to antiestrogens progress spontaneously to non-responsive tumors, becoming a life-threatening metastatic disease. Contrary to the antiestrogen resistant breast carcinomas, patients who do not develop axillary node metastasis have a good prognosis. Nonetheless, there is still an appreciable relapse rate with some benefit from adjuvant treatments for node-negative disease. However, many women are being treated to benefit those relative few destined to relapse. Consequently, it is important to define the prognostic markers that are involved in breast cancer progression and improve our predictions regarding the group of patients that will benefit from any given treatments. We demonstrated that Cyr6l, a protein implicated in angiogenesis is involved in breast cancer progression. Cyr6l is overexpressed in cell lines that do not express estrogen receptor. To demonstrate that Cyr6l is involved in breast cancer, we assessed the extent to which Cyr6l was expressed in tumor specimens. We demonstrated that 30% of invasive breast carcinomas express high levels of Cyr6l. It is our hypothesis that Cyr6l expression predicts the need for adjuvant therapy, relapse, and response to antiestrogens. Thus, we will define the role of Cyr6l in invasive versus intraductal breast carcinomas, and determine its prognostic value in node-negative breast cancer patients. This information may also allow us to make use of Cyr6l expression as a marker for improved prediction of particularized therapeutic decisions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA400952
Entities
People
- Ruth Lupu
Organizations
- University of California, Berkeley