Overexpression of Her-2/neu oncogene in 51 cases of endometrial carcinoma

Background: Endometrial cancer is a common malignancy of the female genital tract. Her-2 overexpression is strongly correlated with tumor grade, type, and stage and this association complicate the issue of response of Her-2 positive endometrial carcinoma to chemotherapy. The aims of the current study are; to estimate the overexpression of Her-2 in endometrial carcinoma in our patients, to correlate the results with other known clinicopathologic markers and to compare our results with others. Material and Methods: This is a cross-sectional retrospective study of 51 cases of endometrial carcinoma collected with their clinical data from Al-Batool Teaching Hospital and Al-Khansa’a Maternity Teaching Hospital in Mosul-Iraq from January 2007 to January 2010. All cases were revised histologically. Forty-three cases were total abdominal hysterectomy and 8 were curetting material. Tumors were classified into two main types, endometroid and non-endometroid carcinomas. Immunoperoxidase stains for Her-2/neu were performed on representative formalin-fixed paraffin embedded blocks. Results: Majority of the endometrial carcinoma were in the 6th decade (50.9%) with a mean of 56.5 year. Her-2/ neu overexpression was observed in 58.8% of cases. The most frequent association was with non-endometroid carcinoma (100%). Expression of Her-2/neu increased with increasing grade reaching 89.47% in grade III tumors. The highest expression was detected in tumors invading deep into the myometrium (77.77%). Conclusion: HER-2/neu appears to play an important role in the biologic behavior of endometrial cancers. It was overexpressed in non-endometroid carcinoma, especially papillary-serous type, high grade tumors, and among the higher stages. Therefore, targeted therapies directed against HER-2, could be effective in some patients with endometrial cancer.