Fluorescent in Situ Hybridization and Real-Time Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction to Evaluate Status in Breast Cancer.

Background: Breast cancer remains the most common and second lethal cancer in females. is one of the most important amplified oncogene in breast cancer. The amplification of is correlated with decreased survival, metastasis, and early recurrence. The amplification of gene and synthesis of the protein are reported in 10%-34% of breast cancer cases associated with tumor size, advanced tumor stage, high-grade tumor, young age at diagnosis, absence of steroid hormone receptor, and lymph node involvement.

Methods: Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) methods are options to evaluate expression. The current study aimed at identifying the correlation between FISH and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in measuring expression.

Results: The study investigated the performance of the real-time PCR as measured against FISH method in IHC +2 borderline cases. In a total of 120 IHC 2+ samples, 58.3% were negative and 41.6% positive for gene, confirmed by FISH as a gold standard method. The real-time PCR ratio was <1.8 for a majority (82.8%) of the tumor samples with unamplified gene by FISH as a gold standard assay.

Conclusion: Despite the fact that real-time PCR is a promising method to evaluate over expression and a supplementary array to FISH, according to the results of the present study it cannot be utilized instead of gold standard techniques; therefore, additional studies should be carried out to appraise the value of this method to evaluate over expression.