Care for women's health! Serum HER-2 testing makes breast cancer diagnosis and treatment more satisfying!

Author: Zheng Anqi

First review: Tai Jing

Final judge: Zhao Yinlong

According to Globocan statistics from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), breast cancer in women has surpassed lung cancer to become the most common tumor. According to statistics from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), there are about 304,000 new cases of breast cancer in Chinese women each year, which means that one out of every six female cancer patients in China is a breast cancer patient.

Therefore, early diagnosis and prognosis detection of breast cancer become crucial.

Today I will introduce to you an important prognostic factor for breast cancer:

Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2----HER-2!!!

Physiological activity of HER-2

HER-2 is a transmembrane glycoprotein with tyrosine kinase activity. Its high expression can accelerate the division of human cells, thereby causing imbalance in their proliferation and differentiation processes, and ultimately leading to the transformation of normal human cells into cancer cells. In addition, studies have found that high expression of HER-2 in the human body can also increase the invasion rate and migration rate of tumor cells, thereby promoting tumor invasion, metastasis and recurrence.

Although the gold standard for diagnosis is pathological diagnosis, serum HER-2 also has advantages over pathological testing, such as higher clinical value and easy availability of serum samples.

Clinical Application of Serum HER-2

1. Reflects breast cancer tumor growth, recurrence or metastasis: Increased levels of HER-2 in serum may indicate high tumor invasiveness.

2. Monitor the effect of breast cancer treatment and predict survival: Since serum HER2 increases earlier than imaging examinations, it is convenient to judge recurrence and metastasis early. Therefore, by detecting the level of HER-2 in the blood, it is helpful to diagnose and predict the status of HER-2 in the patient's tissue. In patients with advanced breast cancer receiving chemotherapy, monitoring serum HER-2 levels helps monitor the efficacy.

3. Guiding the application of targeted drugs for breast cancer: Serum HER-2 can evaluate the efficacy of targeted therapy in real time. It can prompt clinicians to adjust or replace therapeutic drugs, which is conducive to the patient's in-depth understanding of the entire diagnosis and treatment process at any time.

4. Independent prognosis assessment for breast cancer patients: HER-2 plays a unique role in breast cancer follow-up monitoring and efficacy observation.

The meta-analysis included 14 studies involving a total of 3,528 breast cancer patients, most of which used 15 ng/mL as the cutoff value for HER-2.

5. HER-2 protein and other cancers: HER-2 is currently most widely used in the treatment of breast cancer, but it is also overexpressed in many other types of epithelial tumors, such as lung cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, gastric cancer, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer and bladder cancer.

Finally, I hope all the fairies and boys will stay happy, develop good living habits, pay attention to their health, and have a physical examination in time! Kill all illnesses in the cradle~