Assessment of microtubule-associated protein (MAP)-Tau expression as a predictive and prognostic marker in TACT; a trial assessing substitution of sequential docetaxel for FEC as adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer.

The TACT trial is the largest study assessing the benefit of taxanes as part of adjuvant therapy for early breast cancer. The goal of this translational study was to clarify the predictive and prognostic value of Tau within the TACT trial. Tissue microarrays (TMA) were available from 3,610 patients. ER, PR, HER2 from the TACT trial and Tau protein expression was determined by immunohistochemistry on duplicate TMAs. Two parallel scoring systems were generated for Tau expression ('dichotomised' vs. 'combined' score). The positivity rate of Tau expression was 50 % in the trial population (n = 2,483). Tau expression correlated positively with ER (p < 0.001) and PR status (p < 0.001); but negatively with histological grade (p < 0.001) and HER2 status (p < 0.001). Analyses with either scoring systems for Tau expression demonstrated no significant interaction between Tau expression and efficacy of docetaxel. Contrary to the hypothesis that taxane benefit would be enriched in Tau negative/low patients, the only groups with a suggestion of a reduced event rate in the taxane group were the HER2-positive, Tau positive subgroups. Tau expression was seen to be a prognostic factor on univariate analysis associated with an improved DFS, independent of the treatment group (p < 0.001). It had no prognostic value in ER-negative tumours and the weak prognostic effect of Tau in ER-positive tumours (p = 0.02) diminished, when considering ER as an ordinal variable. On multivariable analyses, Tau had no prognostic value in either group. In addition, no significant interaction between Tau expression and benefit from docetaxel in patients within the PR-positive and negative subsets was seen. This is now the second large adjuvant study, and the first with quantitative analysis of ER and Tau expression, failing to show an association between Tau and taxane benefit with limited utility as a prognostic marker for Tau in ER-positive early breast cancer patients.

Isolation and characterization of an epithelial-specific receptor tyrosine kinase from an ovarian cancer cell line.

A protein receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK 6) has been isolated from a complementary DNA library of SKOV-3, an epithelial ovarian cancer cell line, using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-mediated approach. The primary structure of the predicted amino acid sequence of the protein shows a novel NH2-terminal region which has homology to a factor VIII-like domain. The juxtamembrane region is proline and glycine rich and is the longest for any known receptor kinase. The COOH-terminal catalytic domain has all of the canonical sequence motifs of a receptor tyrosine kinase with homology to the TRK-2H protein (49%). A single transcript of 4.5 kilobases is expressed at low levels in heart, placenta, lung, liver, muscle, kidney, and pancreas, with high levels of expression in the brain. Ribonuclease protection assay showed a varying level of expression of message in a panel of eight ovarian cancer cell lines compared to placenta. In situ hybridization analysis demonstrated localization of mRNA in the epithelial cells of the ovary, kidney, small bowel, lung, thymus, and brain. There was a lower level of message in normal, benign, and borderline tumors of the ovary compared to malignant tumors of the ovary. Polyclonal antisera raised against a COOH-terminal synthetic peptide recognize a M(r) 140,000 protein in ovarian cancer cells, which autophosphorylates in an in vitro kinase assay.