ZW49 for HER2-expressing Cancers

The most common presenting signs in this population of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer are unexplained weight loss, bone pain, and pain in the primary tumor site. Findings from a recent study support the inclusion of chemotherapy for these patients with symptomatic HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

around 16.2 million American women and 2.7 million American men get breast cancer. About 12.1 million women and 2.0 million men get colorectal cancer. About 10.1 million women and 1.3 million men get prostate cancer. The remainder gets some form of non-melanoma skin cancer. About 8.6 million women get ovarian cancer. About 5.4 million women and 1.5 million men get lung cancer. About 3.6 million women and 1.0 million men get non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. About 1.6 million women and 0.8 million men get other types of breast cancer. About 0.6 million women and 0.

Clinically, HER2 is an integral component of human cancers. HER2 has been implicated in the development and growth of breast cancer, and thus plays an important role in the therapy of breast cancer.

We have shown that HER2 has an important role in breast cancer progression, metastasis and tumor maintenance, and that HER2-positive/negative phenotyping in primary breast cancer is highly predictive regardless of estrogen receptor (ER) status.

The management of HER2-expressing breast cancer patients appears to differ significantly from common treatments for non-HER2-expressing breast cancer. Patients with HER2-expressing breast cancers may not benefit from treatment with trastuzumab at adjuvant systemic therapy, or if in fact, as many as 30% of patients in this group are not "responders" to trastuzumab, given concurrently with paclitaxel and carboplatin.

Given the success rate of surgery to remove tumors from women treated with the AHSG and RTLN protocols, women with breast and/or lymph node ErbB2+ tumors should generally be cured with the current standard of care. However, for men with locally invasive ErbB2+ advanced prostate cancer, surgery is probably not curative.

Zw49 may offer additional benefit over standard therapy in some cases of advanced HER2+ breast cancer, as well as possible adjuvant therapies and adjuvant therapies used in the early stages of breast cancer treatment. However, the data presented in this paper must be interpreted with caution and further validation in other clinical settings is required.

The Zw49-mediated apoptosis results in death of both proliferating and clonogenic tumor cells, which indicates that Zw49 exerts cell-growth inhibition or proliferation inhibition independently of EGFR.

Zw49 has been shown to play the role of tumor suppressor in human cancer cells. In addition, recent findings suggest that Zw49 is a regulator of the HER2/neu proto-oncogene. There are a few studies indicating that the Zw49 protein level is decreased in HER2 positive breast cancer tissue, thereby confirming the importance of Zw49 as a tumor suppressor protein in breast cancer. It can be assumed that epigenetics plays a pivotal role in decreasing the Zw49 protein expression, thereby causing abnormal proliferation of the cells.

Her2-expressing cancers are most commonly associated with ER negativity in luminal A tumors; however, when ER negativity is not the only risk factor, a combination of other risk factors often results in Her2 expression in luminal A tumors.

Findings from a recent study indicate that Zw49 is primarily responsible for the regulation of DNA methylation. We found that in addition to histone acetylation and deacetylation, Zw49 has a novel role in the repression or induction of the DNA methyltransferase gene, DNMT1. DNA methylation by DNMT1 is responsible for the silencing of target genes including the p16(INK4a) and/or RASSF1A tumor suppressors.