Detection of oestrogen and progesterone receptor expression in breast tumors by semiquantitative PCR.

Background: Estimation of oestrogen receptors (ER) and progesterone receptors (PgR) by dextran-coated charcoal (DCC) or immunohistochemical methods have become standard practices in the management of breast cancer.

Materials And Methods: A "multiplex" polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system was developed for quantitative estimation of ER and PgR mRNA in breast tumour specimens.

Results: A statistically significant correlation could be found between the mRNA of the oestrogen and the progesterone receptor (p < or = 0.

DNA amplification of HER-2/neu and INT-2 oncogenes in epithelial ovarian cancer.

Objective: Oncogene alterations are thought to be prognostic indices in patients with breast cancer. The present study was carried out to investigate the amplification of the HER-2/neu and INT-2 oncogenes in ovarian cancer.

Methods: In a retrospective study of 196 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer, the amplification of the oncogenes HER-2/neu and INT-2 in the DNA of paraffin-embedded tumor cells was determined by quantitative PCR.

HER-2 oncogene is not amplified in primary carcinoma of the fallopian tube. Austrian Cooperative Study Group for Fallopian Tube Carcinoma.

73 women suffering from primary carcinoma of the fallopian tube underwent surgical excision of their tubes. The tissue was embedded in paraffin and investigated for HER-2 oncogene amplification with a quantitative polymerase chain reaction method. DNA could be extracted and successfully prepared in 65/73 samples.

HER-2 amplification but not butyrylcholinesterase multability reflects aggressiveness of European-originated ovarian tumors.

Tumorigenic roles were variably suggested for HER-2 and INT-2 oncogene amplifications and the "atypical" aspartate to glycine mutability in the butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE) gene in ovarian adenocarcinomas. To examine this notion we searched for correlations between these three phenomena and ovarian tumor classification and aggressiveness, using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP), and direct PCR sequencing. Our findings revealed no alleles carrying the atypical BCHE mutability in 30 European-originated patients with ovarian tumors compared with 11% (2/18) such alleles in Israeli patients with malignant ovarian tumors.

Clinical therapy and HER-2 oncogene amplification in breast cancer: chemo- vs radiotherapy.

One hundred and five breast cancer patients with stage T3/4, N+/-, Mo were treated at random either with a pre- and postoperative chemotherapy (A) (5-drug-combination + tamoxifen) or with a pre- and postoperative radiotherapy (B). Paraffin embedded tissue samples were prepared from tumor material taken by biopsy prior to therapy as well as at surgery from patients of both groups to estimate the HER-2 oncogene copy numbers before and after treatment. In 53 and 50% of the pretherapeutic samples the HER-2 gene was amplified in groups A and B, respectively.