Gene expression profiles in breast tumors regarding the presence or absence of estrogen and progesterone receptors.
Estrogen acts via its receptor (ER) to stimulate cell growth and differentiation in the mammary gland. ER and progesterone receptor (PR), which is regulated by estrogen via ER, have been used as prognostic markers in clinical management of breast cancer patients. Patients with ER- breast tumors have a poorer prognosis than patients with ER+ tumors. The aim of the present study was the identification of tumor-associated genes differentially expressed in breast tumors regarding the presence or absence of ER and PR hybridized with cDNA microarrays containing 4,500 tumor-derived expressed sequence tags generated using the ORESTES technique. Samples of human primary breast carcinomas from 38 patients were analyzed. The experiments were performed in triplicates and data from each element were acquired by phosphoimage scanning. Data acquisition was performed using the ArrayVision software. After normalization statistical analysis was applied. In a preliminary analysis, 98 differentially expressed transcripts were identified, 46 were found to be more expressed in ER+/PR+ and 52 were found to be more expressed in ER-/PR- breast tumors. The biochemical functions of the genes in the reported expression profile are diverse and include metabolic enzymes, protein kinases, helicases, transcription factors, cell cycle regulators and apoptotic factors. ER-/PR- breast tumors displayed increased levels of transcripts of genes associated with neurodegeneration and genes associated with proliferation were found in ER+/PR+ tumors.
Nagai
Maria Aparecida
MA
Disciplina de Oncologia, Departamento de Radiologia da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. nagai@usp.br
Da Rós
Nancy
N
Neto
Mário Mourão
MM
de Faria Junior
Silvio Rodrigues
SR
Brentani
Maria Mitzi
MM
Hirata
Roberto
R
Neves
Eduardo Jordão
EJ
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001483:Base Sequence; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology*; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002455:Cell Division; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005260:Female; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D011379:Prognosis; D011960:Receptors, Estrogen / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics*; D011980:Receptors, Progesterone / Q000032:analysis* / Q000235:genetics*
D011960:Receptors, Estrogen; D011980:Receptors, Progesterone