Cancer Susceptibility Candidate 4 (CASC4)

The increased expression level of CASC4 is associated with HER-2/neu proto-oncogene overexpression. Amplification and resulting overexpression of this proto-oncogene are found in approximately 30% of human breast and 20% of human ovarian cancers. Further characterization of the product of this gene may yield insight into the fundamental biology and pathogenetic effects of HER-2/neu overexpression in human breast and ovarian cancer cells. Alternatively spliced variants encoding different isoforms have been identified for this gene.

Finally, up-regulation of two of the identified cDNAs, one novel and one identified but as yet uncharacterized gene, was confirmed in human breast cancer specimens in association with HER-2/ neu overexpression.