Introduction: Colorectal cancer is a major worldwide
health problem with an annual incidence of 1.2 million and
an annual mortality of over 600,000 people. Her2/neu oncogen
is one of four epidermal growth factor receptors. It's located on chromosome 17q21 and encodes a 185 transmembrane
protein with tyrosine kinase activity that functions as a growth
factor receptor. Clinically, amplification and/or overexpression of Her2/neu has been associated with poor prognosis in a
number of tumor types such as breast and ovarian cancer.
Conflicting data exist about the prevalence of HER-2/neu
overexpression in colorectal cancer ranging from 0 to 83%.
Aim of the Work: The aim of this study were to compare
qRT-PCR and immunohistochemical expression of HER-2/neu oncogene in colorectal carcinoma and their correlation to
other clinicopathological parameters.
Material and Methods: This work involved 50 cases of
surgically resected colorectal cancers. HER2/neu immunohistochemistry was performed using the C-erbB-2 gene product. Results: Out of 50 studied cases, 40 cases (80%) were
HER-2/neu negative (scor 0 and 1+) and 10 cases (20%) were
positive (scor 2+ and 3+). No statistically significant correlation
were found between IHC expression HER2 and clinicopathological parameters. Among the examined 50 cases, 44 cases
(88%) were over expression of HER-2/neu by qRT-PCR (>2)
and 6 cases (12%) were under expression of HER-2/neu by
qRT-PCR (