HER3 expression is correlated to distally located and low-grade colon cancer

Figures & data

Table 1. Patients and tumor characteristics.

	Number of patients	HER3 expression in tumor ow vs. high	p-Chi^2
Total	521	174 (33%) vs. 347 (67%)
Gender
Male	272 (52%)	91 (33%) vs. 181 (67%)	p = 1.0
Female	249 (48%)	83 (33%) vs. 166 (67%)
Age
<66 years	266 (51%)	85 (32%) vs. 181 (68%)	p = 0.5
≥66 years	255 (49%)	89 (35%) vs. 166 (65%)
Stage
II	232 (45%)	86 (37%) vs. 146 (63%)	p = 0.1
III	289 (55%)	88 (30%) vs. 201 (70%)
Tumor site
Right	243 (47%)
Transverse	48 (9%)		p < 0.0001
Left	41 (8%)
Sigmoid	189 (36%)	120 (41%) vs. 171 (59%)
Proximal colon	291 (56%)
Distal colon	230 (44%)	54 (23%) vs. 176 (77%)
Tumor grade
High-grade	104 (21%)	53 (51%) vs. 51 (49%)	p < 0.0001
Low-grade (23 missing)	394 (79%)	114 (29%) vs. 280 (71%)
Treatment
Surgery	275 (53%)	95 (35%) vs. 180 (65%)
Surgery + chemotherapy	246 (47%)	79 (32%) vs. 167 (68%)	p = 0.6
Nodes analyzed
<12	318 (84%)	98 (31%) vs. 220 (69%)
≥12 (144 missing number of nodes)	59 (16%)	27 (46%) vs. 32 (54%)	p = 0.03

Figure 1. HER3 expression, IHC, grade 0 and grade 3 detected by HER3 monoclonal rabbit antibody (Abcam, SP71 ErbB, ab 93739, dil 1:800).

Table 2. HER3 expression grades in colon cancer, high vs. low expression.

Figure 2. Distribution of high HER3 expression related to colon tumor localization in 521 patients with colon cancer (p < 0.0001).

Figure 3. Disease-free survival in proximal and distal tumor location with respect to HER3 expression. For distal colon, the difference in DFS between low and high HER3 expressing tumor is significant (p = 0.03).

Table 3. Multivariate analysis for disease-free survival in distal colon tumors (n = 230).

	HR for DFS	95% CI	p-Value
Sex (female vs. male)	0.63	0.40–0.99	0.042
Stage (III vs. II)	1.54	0.97–2.46	0.066
Number of analyzed LN, ≤11 or ≥12	1.06	0.54–2.08	0.861
Surgery + Adj CT vs. surgery	0.92	0.60–1.43	0.723
Age <66 or ≥66	1.05	0.68–1.63	0.820
Tumor grade	0.88	0.47–1.65	0.693
HER3 expression (low vs. high)	0.56	0.31–0.99	0.048

CI, confidence interval; CT, chemotherapy; DFS, disease-free survival; HR, hazard ratio; LN, lymph nodes; not significant (p > 0.05) (Cox Proportional Hazards Model).