NIST, NCI, SAIC partner on new method for detecting HER2 bre...( Generations of mothers have served u...),Health

Generations of mothers have served up chicken soup to remedy the common cold, but now the therapeutic fowl may find use in diagnosis as well. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the scientific research firm SAIC recently showed how chicken antibodies may one day improve the detection of an aggressive form of breast cancer.

HER2 is one of a family of genes that help regulate the growth and proliferation of human cells. Normal cells have two copies of HER2, but about 20 to 25 percent of breast cancers have multiple copies of the gene, resulting in the overproduction of a HER2-encoded protein (called HER2) that stimulates tumors to be particularly fast growing and difficult to treat in a subset of breast cancer patients.

Patients with that form of breast cancerabout 40,000 women in the United States annuallycan be treated with a monoclonal antibody called trastuzumab that targets and inhibits the growth of tumor cells with higher-than-normal levels of the HER2 protein. But because the treatment can have adverse side effects, its important to screen for those patients who would benefit from it by testing them for one or both of the two relevant biomarkers: the amplified HER2 gene or its overexpressed HER2 protein. Unfortunately, the existing tests for these biomarkers can yield a significant number of false positivesas many as 23 percent of patients in one 2006 clinical studyresulting in some women getting a somewhat risky and expensive treatment that cant help them.

In a paper in the International Journal of Cancer,* the NIST-NCI-SAIC research team found that chicken immunoglobulin Y (IgY) antibody created against the HER2 protein could be tagged with quantum dot (tiny, intense and tunable sources of colorful light) to more reliably detect the HER2 biomarker than the existing diagnostic tests using mammalian antibodies tagged with conventiona
'/>"/>