Abstract
More than 50% of breast cancers are currently defined as “Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) low breast cancer (BC)”, with HER2 immunohistochemistry (IHC) scores of +1 or +2 with a negative fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) test. In most studies that compared the clinical and biological characteristics of HER2-low BC with HER2-negative BC, HER2-low was not associated with unique clinical and molecular characteristics, and it seems that the importance of HER2 in these tumors is being a docking site for the antibody portion of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs). Current pathological methods may underestimate the proportion of BCs that express low levels of HER2 due to analytical limitations and tumor heterogeneity. In this review we summarize and contextualize the most recent literature on HER2-low breast cancers, including clinical and translational studies We also review the challenges of assessing low HER2 expression in BC and discuss the current and future therapeutic landscape for these tumors.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 605-616 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy |
| Volume | 15 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 Shirman et al.
Keywords
- ERBB2 low
- HER2 targeted therapy
- HER2-low
- T-DXd
- breast cancer
- trastuzumab
- trastuzumab-deruxtecan
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Oncology
