Trastuzumab administration in patients with breast cancer is associated with increased primary tumor expression of IL-1β.
A complete understanding of how tumor signal transduction in human breast cancer is modulated by trastuzumab, a monoclonal antibody targeted against the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) (1, 2), is lacking. By mining published and public microarray and gene expression data (3, 4) from the primary tumors of patients treated with trastuzumab, we found that the gene encoding interleukin-1β (5), IL1β, was among those most differentially expressed in the primary tumors of patients treated with trastuzumab. IL1β was expressed at significantly higher levels in the tumors of patients treated with trastuzumab, indicating that a cytokine associated with metastasis to the bones in cancer models (6-9) and correlated with relapse of disease to the bones in human breast cancer (8) is produced at significantly higher quantities in the tumors of breast cancer patients treated with trastuzumab.