title: Oncogene addiction and immunity: clinical implications of tumour infiltrating lymphocytes in breast cancers overexpressing the HER2/neu oncogene.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To review the evidence that correlates tumour infiltrating lymphocytes, a surrogate biomarker of pre-existing host antitumour immunity, and survival in HER2-overexpressing breast cancers. This is of particular relevance to developing immune biomarkers and harnessing new immunotherapeutics in this breast cancer subtype.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Oncogene addiction, in which cancer cells become reliant on a single oncogenic pathway for tumour growth and progression, has traditionally been thought of as a cell intrinsic characteristic. However, increasing evidence from multiple studies exploring the relationship between markers of an antitumour immune response and clinical outcome in HER2-overexpressing breast cancer points to the importance of a permissive microenvironment in oncogene-addicted tumours.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Characterizing the immune microenvironment in HER2-overexpressing breast cancer has the potential to furnish predictive and prognostic biomarkers that may be useful in routine clinical decision-making. The host-tumour immune interface is emerging as a key aspect of breast cancer biology that is likely to yield novel therapies in the near future.
authors.affiliation: Division of Research and Clinical Medicine, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Savas
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Caramia
authors.forename: Zhi Ling
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Teo
authors.forename: Sherene
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Loi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology* / Q000401:mortality; D005260:Female; D018734:Genes, erbB-2 / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D016246:Lymphocytes, Tumor-Infiltrating / Q000276:immunology*; D011379:Prognosis