Abstract
Human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2/neu; erbB2) belongs to a family of four transmembrane receptor tyrosine kinases involved in signal transduction pathways that regulate cell growth and proliferation. Amplification or overexpression of HER2/neu occurs in about 30% of human breast and ovarian cancers and is associated with a poor clinical outcome, including short survival time and short time to relapse. Recent advances in our understanding of HER2/neu signaling pathways have greatly increased our knowledge of breast cancer tumorigenesis and have provided new targets for treating breast and ovarian tumors that overexpress HER2/neu. This review will focus on the signaling network mediated by HER2/neu in breast cancer and discuss our understanding of these pathways, which seem to be particularly important in mediating cell survival and growth under a wide variety of circumstances in breast cancer.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 38-48 |
| Number of pages | 11 |
| Journal | Seminars in Oncology |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 5 SUPPL. 16 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 2003 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Supported by National Institutes of Health grant nos. CA 58880, CA 77858, and CA 78633; by a SPORE grant in ovarian cancer (CA 83639) (M.-C. H.); and by the Nellie Connally Breast Cancer Research Fund at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (M.-C. H.).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Hematology
- Oncology
