Abstract

The increasing number of factors to be taken into account in the oestrogen transcriptional process has created a need to develop a rapid screening method to evaluate their role in physiology and pathology. Molecular biology techniques enable gene expression studies at the mRNA level with small amounts of tissues. We therefore developed a semi-quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique using fluorescent oligonucleotides to analyse simultaneously a large panel of interrelated genes involved in the oestrogen transcriptional pathway using a moderately expressed housekeeping gene, the hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase gene (HPRT), as the reference gene. Expression levels of oestrogen receptors (ERalpha, ERbeta), cofactors AIB1, RIP140, SMRT and the Fas-associated protein-tyrosine phophatase-1 (FAP-1) genes were evaluated in breast, endometrial and ovarian cancer cell lines and in three ERalpha-positive and three ERalpha-negative breast cancer tumours. This technique provides a rapid and reliable way to quantitate simultaneously numerous mRNAs of genes involved in the oestrogen pathway from small amounts of tissues.