WAVE3 is a Biomarker for Breast Cancer Progression and Metastasis.

摘要

About one-third of patients with cancer have metastases that are detected at the time their cancer is first diagnosed, and an additional third of patients have metastases that are too small to be detected by usual diagnostic tests. These micrometastases, however, will eventually grow into clinically significant metastases if the patient receives no treatment or local treatment of the primary tumor only. Metastatic breast cancer is a disease with low survival rates. The treatment of metastatic breast cancer involves the palliation of symptoms by reducing the tumor's size and growth rate. Currently, the effectiveness of therapy is determined by a series of tests. Imaging tests may include bone scan, radiograph, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and computed tomography (CT). Blood tests may include tumor markers, such as CA 27.29 and CA 15-3. The detection of circulating tumor cells has been proposed as a method to assess response to treatment of metastatic breast cancer. The detection of tumor cells may have clinical utility in risk stratification in early breast cancer, in early detection of relapse, and in monitoring the response to treatment. The circulating cells appear to have characteristics of tumor cells and may be identified in the peripheral blood of patients with cancer. The techniques that have been used to detect circulating tumor cells include cytometric and nucleic acid based approaches. The cytometric approaches use immunocytochemical methods to identify and characterize the individual tumor cells. Nucleic acid-based approaches detect the DNA and RNA sequences that are differentially expressed in tumor cells and normal blood components. The purpose of this study is to determine whether WAVE3, a metastasis promoter gene, can be used as a predictive marker for the progression and metastasis of breast cancer, using immunohistochemistry on human breast cancer tumors of different stages of breast cancer.