Investigation of Estrogen Receptor Alpha Gene Expression in Breast Cancer Tissue from Iranian Population Using Real-Time PCR Assay

One of the most useful parameters for prognosis and particularly predicting hormoneresponse therapy in breast cancer is hormone receptor content in order to improve predictionof response to treatment. The estrogen receptors are potential candidate in this issue. Theaim of this study was to measure the Relative Quantitative Real-time PCR assay based onSYBR green day to quantify of expression of ERα gene in normal specimens and malignantbreast cancer specimens. For this purpose, 21 adenocarcinoma cases with grade 2 and 10normal samples were screened before treatment and without contamination. After RNAextraction and cDNA synthesis, ERα and GAPDH genes for measurement of relativequantification were amplified by Real-time PCR according to the standard method. Specificityof amplification products was confirmed by melting curve analysis. The obtained Ct and ï²Ctvalues were analyzed by SDS v1.4 software, GLM program and student’s t testsprocedure were performed in SAS v9.1 software to determine statistical significance. Theresults showed high expression of ERα mRNA (68%) and protein (53%) in majority of breastcancer tissues compared to normal breast tissues (p= 0.035). ERα expression showednarrow variations in tumor tissues too. Also, the high ERα mRNA associated with tumor sizeof breast carcinomas. It is the first attempt to report the expression of ERα in Iranian patientswith breast cancers and the prevalence of the expression is similar to breast cancers noted inother populations. So, this study results indicated that ERα can be used as a biomarker forprognosis, screening and diagnosis of malignant patients against normal persons even, atthe beginning stages of breast cancer. Furthermore, this method can be help to patientselection for anti-estrogen therapy and monitoring response to therapy.

کلیدواژه ها:

Biomarker ، Breast Cancer ، Estrogen Receptors-Alpha ، Gene Expression ، Real- Time PCR ، Prognosis ، Screening ، Diagnosis