Abstracts of poster presentations

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 152 KB
• Volume: 88
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0142(20000301)88:5+<1267::aid-cncr15>3.0.co;2-u

✦ Synopsis

This study was conducted to gain insight into the factors that may be responsible for poorly differentiated aggressive tumors.

BACKGROUND.

Several recent reports have shown that the breast carcinoma mortality rate is approximately three times as high in African-American women compared with other populations. In addition, the available data also indicate that the tumors are very aggressive and poorly differentiated, with a very low frequency of hormone receptors.

METHODOLOGY.

The authors investigated the transcript profiles of the estrogen receptor (ER), the most important prognostic factor in breast carcinoma, in the tumors derived from African-American women. They analyzed 15 immunohistochemically ER-positive and 6 ER-negative malignant tumors for estrogen receptor mRNAs by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction using a number of primer pairs. For comparative purposes, five tumor tissues derived from white women also were included.

RESULTS.

Three types of modifications were observed in a majority of tumors: 1) truncations/alterations in exon 8; 2) the tumors that had alterations/truncations in exon 8 also had base insertions; and 3) absence of the naturally occurring exon 7 deletion variant ER. Unexpectedly, two of six ER-negative tumors studied had full-length receptor mRNAs and none of the variant transcripts.