European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine

Background:Oesophageal cancer is the eighth most common cancer and sixth in cancer
related mortality, worldwide. The current study was carried out to see the role of three
markers (P53, HER2, EGFR) in various oesophageal lesions, their association in cancer
progression and their role as tumour markers.
Materials and Methods: Study was conducted on 100 cases of oesophageal lesions
consisting of both neoplastic and non-neoplastic spectrum. Immunohistochemistry was
performed on all the specimens for three markers as per the set criteria and expression
of these markers was studied and scoring was done accordingly.
Results: Present study was conducted on 100 cases with oesophageal lesions both
neoplastic and non-neoplastic. Parameters like age, gender, family history, alcohol
intake, cigarette smoking and location of lesion in oesophagus were also studied.
Expression of P53, Her2, EGFR were studied using IHC.
Conclusion: P53, HER2 and EGFR show a strong association with EC and
premalignant lesions, the absence of their expression in normal oesophageal tissue and
non-neoplastic conditions, points out their role in development of EC and tumour
progression. Out of the three markers, P53 has the strongest association with EC. HER2
overexpression was more in case of EAC than ESCC, indicating its importance in
guiding further treatment. EGFR over- expression was noted in fewer cases.

This study aimed to compare two methods of quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) using the intercalating SYBR Green dye and TaqMan hybridization probes to determine the amount of the HER2 gene (human epidermal receptor) in breast tumours.
Methods--- The experiments were carried out with 32 validated samples of breast cancer and two gastric cancer cell lines. An immunohistochemical (IHC) assay was used to evaluate the accuracy of the RT-PCR methods.
Results--- The obtained results show that real-time PCR with the TaqMan probes allows the use of a small amount of DNA (≥0.4 ng/μl) to determine the overexpression of the HER2 gene. Real-time PCR with SYBR Green allowed us to determine the minimum number of false negatives resulting from the absence of marker expression in tumour tissue.
Conclusions--- The full correspondence of the results of the RTPCR and immunohistochemistry methods obtained for the cell line samples makes it possible to introduce the qPCR method into clinical practice for use in detecting the HER2/neu gene content.