HER2 intratumoral heterogeneity is independently associated with incomplete response to anti-HER2 neoadjuvant chemotherapy in HER2-positive breast carcinoma

Anti-HER2 neoadjuvant chemotherapy has been widely used in HER2-positive breast cancer patients; however, pathologic complete response (pCR) is achieved in only 40–50% of patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of HER2 intratumoral heterogeneity (ITH) with response to anti-HER2 neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Assessment of HER2 ITH was performed on whole tissue sections of pre-treatment samples from a cohort of 64 invasive breast carcinoma cases originally considered positive for HER2 and treated with anti-HER2 neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Both HER2 gene signal and protein expression were simultaneously evaluated by means of a single-slide dual assay, designated as a HER2 gene-protein assay (GPA). HER2 GPA was carried out as well on surgical resection tissues from 25 cases with incomplete therapeutic response. Nineteen of 64 cases (30%) showed HER2 ITH. Significantly more cases with HER2 ITH were found in the incomplete response group (56%, 14/25) than in the pCR group (13%, 5/39). Patients without ITH detectable by GPA had a 76% pCR outcome (34/45), as compared to 26% (5/19) for those with detectable ITH. Multivariate analysis demonstrated HER2 ITH, progesterone receptor positivity, and relatively low HER2/chromosome 17 centromere ratio to be significantly associated with incomplete response. HER2 ITH analyses conducted with GPA method revealed that HER2 ITH is an independent factor predicting incomplete response to anti-HER2 neoadjuvant chemotherapy.