Abstract:

Objective

To investigate the expression and clinical significance of ERCC1 gene, one member of the nucleotide excision repair gene family, in breast cancer before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Methods

The expression of ERCC1 gene was detected by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)in 56 specimens of breast cancer patients without any preoperative treatment and 36 tumor tissues of the patients who had been treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy preoperatively.

Results

The positive expression rate of ERCC1 gene in breast cancer was 37.5%, and its expression had no relations with patient's age (t=0.229,P＞0.05),tumor size (F =0.586,P＞0.05), axillary lymph node metastasis (t =0.365,P＞0.05), pathological type (t=0.434,P＞0.05), histological grade (F =0.820,P＞0.05), ER(t=0.523,P＞0.05), PR (t =0.416,P＞0.05), and HER-2 (t =0.847,P＞0.05). The expression of ERCC1 gene in tumer was higher in neoadjuvant chemotherapy group than in the non-chemotherapy group, and there was a statistically significant difference (t=3.428,P＜0.01).

Conclusions

The expression of ERCC1 gene is not affected by the clinical and pathological features of breast cancer,but may be increased by neoadjuvant chemotherapy, so postoperative neoadjuvant chemotherapy should be given much attention.

Key words: Breast neoplasms; Neoadjuvant chemotherapy; Nucleotide excision repair; ERCC1; Multidrug resistance gene