BIRC3 is a differentially expressed gene in the tumors of breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab.
Trastuzumab (Herceptin) is a monoclonal antibody targeting the extracellular domain of the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) (1) utilized for the treatment of adjuvant and metastatic breast cancer (2) in the United States and worldwide. We mined published microarray and gene expression data (3, 4) to discover in an unbiased manner the most striking transcriptional features of trastuzumab treatment. We found that BIRC3 was among the the genes most differentially expressed in the primary tumors of patients treated with trastuzumab. BIRC3, a molecule with the capacity to promote the survival of cancer cells (5), was expressed at significantly higher levels in the primary tumors of patients treated with trastuzumab as compared to that of patients not treated with trastuzumab.