her2+ bc with lymphocytes relapses less...

[RobinP]

It appears there are two types of her2 bc that exist and one relapses less, the one with increased lymphocytes. Now when will they test for this? http://www.broad.mit.edu/publications/broad824

[Becky]

Hi Robin

Is it that the lymphocytes are associated with the tumor or that the lymphs are those measured in the bloodstream (as I could not access the article). The reason I ask is twofold. Firstly, my counts on lymphs have always been on the high side and continue to be. I blame this more on allergies than anything else. Secondly, I used Leukine instead of neulasta/neupogen and this boosts everything including monocytes that feed the lymphocyte stream so during chemo, my lymphs prior to treatments were astronomical. I was extremely pleased with this because the lymph phenomenon is what you want for self vaccination (and why Leukine is used to boost the immune response of all the Her2 vaccine trials).

I am sure this was an interesting article. Is there any way you can cut and paste.

For the record, I used Leukine in order to try to self vaccinate as many studies with the drug suggested and proved (to some extent) because at that time, Herceptin was not available in the adjuvant situation until my chemo was 4 months over.

[RobinP]

http://www.broad.mit.edu/publications/broad824

Here's the correct link, Becky, which I also fixed in my above post. Looks like they are referring to lymphocytes in the pathology report decrease mets in node negative her2+bc. I think those with lymphocytes are displaying more robust immunity in response to cancerous breast cells, thus, delaying spread to lymph nodes and elsewhere.

[Jackie07]

Here's the abstract from PubMed:

Cancer Research 2007 Nov 15;67(22):10669-76.

High expression of lymphocyte-associated genes in node-negative HER2+ breast cancers correlates with lower recurrence rates.

The Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Gene expression analysis has identified biologically relevant subclasses of breast cancer. However, most classification schemes do not robustly cluster all HER2+ breast cancers, in part due to limitations and bias of clustering techniques used. In this article, we propose an alternative approach that first separates the HER2+ tumors using a gene amplification signal for Her2/neu amplicon genes and then applies consensus ensemble clustering separately to the HER2+ and HER2- clusters to look for further substructure. We applied this procedure to a microarray data set of 286 early-stage breast cancers treated only with surgery and radiation and identified two basal and four luminal subtypes in the HER2- tumors, as well as two novel and robust HER2+ subtypes. HER2+ subtypes had median distant metastasis-free survival of 99 months [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 83-118 months] and 33 months (95% CI, 11-54 months), respectively, and recurrence rates of 11% and 58%, respectively. The low recurrence subtype had a strong relative overexpression of lymphocyte-associated genes and was also associated with a prominent lymphocytic infiltration on histologic analysis. These data suggest that early-stage HER2+ cancers associated with lymphocytic infiltration are a biologically distinct subtype with an improved natural history.

[Becky]

Thanks to both of you.

Have a great weekend