Abstract
Background: Despite many published studies on ERβ, 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 ERβ isoforms and their heterogeneous expression profile.Methods: We compared expression of ERβ, -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 ERβ 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 ERβ uninformative.Conclusions: With the technology now available, we suggest a more refined approach be adopted to help resolve some of the controversy surrounding ERβ.
Highlights
Estrogen receptor (ER) β was first described in 1997 [1]
Initial studies on its putative role in breast cancer were conducted using RT-PCR on whole tumour extracts [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Recent immunohistochemical studies have demonstrated that expression of these isoforms can identify breast cancer patients with different prognoses or responses to endocrine therapy, underlining their separate functions [13,14]
Summary
Initial studies on its putative role in breast cancer were conducted using RT-PCR on whole tumour extracts [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Whilst this was the only method available at the time to study ERβ, there have since been significant advances. Despite many published studies on ERβ, 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 ERβ isoforms and their heterogeneous expression profile
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
