Association of Human Epidermal Growth Factor-2 receptor expression in gastric cancer with patient age and gender, tumor stage and differentiation degree

Abstract

Relevance: Gastric cancer is a heterogeneous malignant disease. In carcinomas, HER2 functions as an oncogene, primarily due to high gene amplification, which leads to protein overexpression in the cell membrane, enhancing malignant cell properties. Identifying new and effective biomarkers is essential for improving gastric cancer diagnosis, refining prognostic accuracy, predicting disease progression, and developing more efficient patient treatment strategies.

The study aimed to assess the correlation between HER2 expression in gastric cancer and key clinical factors, including age, gender, disease stage, and tumor differentiation degree.

Methods: This comparative descriptive study analyzed surgical specimens from 109 patients with gastric cancer (stages 0-IIIC) collected from the pathology department of West Kazakhstane Medical University (WKMU) Medical Center following gastric cancer surgeries performed between 2021 and 2022. Histological and immunohistochemical studies were conducted in the morphological laboratory of WKMU Department of Histology. The collected data underwent statistical processing.

Results: In the present study, the rates of positive Her2/neu expression in GC statistically significantly differed depending on the patient's age (p=0.026) and gender (p=0.023) but did not statistically differ depending on the tumor's localization, histopathological differentiation, and disease stage.

Conclusions: Considering the tendency towards the significance of positive expression of Her2/neu in low-differentiated gastric cancer (50%) and stages II-III of the disease, the Her2/neu marker can be considered as a potential therapeutic target that requires preliminary testing when prescribing targeted therapy.