PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Giuffrè, Giuseppe
AU  - Ieni, Antonio
AU  - Barresi, Valeria
AU  - Caruso, Rosario Alberto
AU  - Tuccari, Giovanni
TI  - HER2 status in unusual histological variants of gastric adenocarcinomas
AID  - 10.1136/jclinpath-2011-200345
DP  - 2012 Mar 01
TA  - Journal of Clinical Pathology
PG  - 237--241
VI  - 65
IP  - 3
4099  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/65/3/237.short
4100  - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/65/3/237.full
SO  - J Clin Pathol2012 Mar 01; 65
AB  - Aim To investigate HER2 status in a cohort of 109 gastric adenocarcinomas also including unusual variants, such as 14 hepatoid (HAS) and 9 mitochondrion-rich (MRC), characterised by an opposing clinical behaviour.Methods and Results Using HercepTest (DAKO) and FISH test (pharmDx DAKO), HER2 overexpression/amplification was encountered in 23 of 109 (21.10%) of all gastric adenocarcinomas. A progressive increase in HER2 overexpression was observed moving from the poorly cohesive histotype to MRC, tubular adenocarcinomas and HAS. A statistically significant difference was found between poorly cohesive carcinomas and the others; a similar significant difference was encountered between HAS and all other variants of adenocarcinoma. HER2 overexpression was significantly associated with high grade, advanced stage, high Ki-67 labelling index value and death from gastric cancer. Multivariate analysis identified HER2 overexpression as an independent unfavourable prognostic variable for adenocarcinomas as a whole and also for the HAS variant.Conclusions Trastuzumab has been confirmed as an additional useful therapeutic standard option for patients with HER2-positive advanced gastric cancers, and also in aggressive variants of adenocarcinomas such as HAS.