TY  - JOUR
A1  - Diessner, Joachim
A1  - Bruttel, Valentin
A1  - Becker, Kathrin
A1  - Pawlik, Miriam
A1  - Stein, Roland
A1  - Häusler, Sebastian
A1  - Dietl, Johannes
A1  - Wischhusen, Jörg
A1  - Hönig, Arnd
T1  - Targeting breast cancer stem cells with HER2-specific antibodies and natural killer cells
JF  - American Journal of Cancer Research
N2  - Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Every year, nearly 1.4 million new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed, and about 450.000 women die of the disease. Approximately 15-25% of breast cancer cases exhibit increased quantities of the trans-membrane receptor tyrosine kinase human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) on the tumor cell surface. Previous studies showed that blockade of this HER2 proto-oncogene with the antibody trastuzumab substantially improved the overall survival of patients with this aggressive type of breast cancer. Recruitment of natural killer (NK) cells and subsequent induction of antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity (ADCC) contributed to this beneficial effect. We hypothesized that antibody binding to HER2-positive breast cancer cells and thus ADCC might be further improved by synergistically applying two different HER2-specific antibodies, trastuzumab and pertuzumab. We found that tumor cell killing via ADCC was increased when the combination of trastuzumab, pertuzumab, and NK cells was applied to HER2-positive breast cancer cells, as compared to the extent of ADCC induced by a single antibody. Furthermore, a subset of \(CD44^{high}CD24^{low}HER2^{low}\) cells, which possessed characteristics of cancer stem cells, could be targeted more efficiently by the combination of two HER2-specific antibodies compared to the efficiency of one antibody. These in vitro results demonstrated the immunotherapeutic benefit achieved by the combined application of trastuzumab and pertuzumab. These findings are consistent with the positive results of the clinical studies, CLEOPATRA and NEOSPHERE, conducted with patients that had HER2-positive breast cancer. Compared to a single antibody treatment, the combined application of trastuzumab and pertuzumab showed a stronger ADCC effect and improved the targeting of breast cancer stem cells.
KW  - trastuzumab
KW  - breast cancer
KW  - tumor stem cells
KW  - ADCC
KW  - pertuzumab
Y1  - 2013
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-128633
VL  - 3
IS  - 2
ER  -