GENE EXPRESSION PROFILING IN BREAST CANCER BY SRPP METHOD

Background: Gene expression profiling has provided us with insight into the prognostic of breast cancer and led to the development of molecular gene signature models designed to aid in clinical decision-making. We sought to develop a quantitative analysis of the relative expression levels of a target gene from tumor tissues and normal tissues in a single assay. Methods: Sequence-tagged reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction coupled with pyrosequencing (SRPP) was used for comparing prognostic gene relative expression levels in breast tumor. In the pyrogram, the sequence represents the gene source and the peak intensity represents the relative expression level of the gene in corresponding source. Results: The expression levels of ten kinds of prognostic marker genes (AL080059, MMP9, EXT1, ORC6L, AF052162, C9orf30, FBXO31, IGFBP5, ESM1 and RUNDC1) among the breast tumor tissues and normal tissues in the patients were accurately detected (n=3). The accuracy of SRPP was contrasted to the result of real-time PCR (n=3). Conclusions:The results show that SRPP method is reliable and reproducible in quantitatively comparing gene expression levels among different sources at a low cost. It can be apply to the prognostic gene relative expression assay in breast cancer.