Quantitative in Situ Assessment of the Somatostatin Receptor in Breast Cancer to Assess Response to Targeted Therapy With 111-in-Penetreotide

摘要

Somatostatin (SST) is a peptide hormone implicated in the growth and progression of cancers and SSTR2 is the predominant receptor subtype expressed in breast cancer. We hope to study the pattern of expression and clinical significance of SSTR2 levels in breast cancer. To this end, we have developed an algorithm called AQUA that can assess protein expression on tissue microarrays (TMA) based on molecular co-localization techniques. Our results show that SSTR2 is variably expressed in a large proportion of breast cancers and is localized predominantly to the malignant cells. Although expression was not significantly correlated with survival on our TMA, it did appear to be overexpressed compared with benign breast tissue. Cell line controls have been developed as a normalization feature and the AQUA algorithms have been translated to whole sections. We have also assessed multiple methodologies for SSTR2 expression in soft tissue/bone tumors and plan to pursue similar strategies in breast cancer.