Gene expression of ER beta isoforms in laser microdissected human breast cancers: Implications for gene expression analyses

作者：Cummings Michele; Iremonger James; Green Caroline A; Shaaban Abeer M; Speirs Valerie^*

来源：Cellular Oncology, 2009, 31(6): 467-473.

DOI：10.3233/CLO-2009-0495

• Estrogen receptor beta
• laser microdissection
• breast cancer

Background: Despite many published studies on ER beta, progress towards understanding its role in breast cancer remains slow. This is largely due to discordant data between mRNA and protein studies as well as failure to take into account the biologically distinct ER beta isoforms and their heterogeneous expression profile.
Methods: We compared expression of ER beta 1, -2 and -5 genes in HB2 and MCF-7 breast cell lines, primary breast fibroblasts (n = 5) and whole tissue and laser microdissected epithelial and stromal cells obtained from 25 human breast tumours.
Results: Our study shows that the level of gene expression of ER beta isoforms depends on the cell population within a given tumour and varies dramatically in different cellular compartments. This has implications for gene expression analyses and could explain some of the contradictory data published to date, rendering "grind and bind" analyses of ER beta uninformative.
Conclusion: With the technology now available, we suggest a more refined approach be adopted to help resolve some of the controversy surrounding ER beta.

• 出版日期2009