A Study of Estrogen and Progesterone Receptor Expression in Neuroepithelial Tumors

ABSTRACT

There exist many controversial debates on the presence of estrogen and progesterone receptor in neuroepithelial tumors. The receptors of these two female sex steroid hormones, i.e; estrogen and progesterone receptors, were examined in 24 neuroepithelial tumors. Using a dextran-coated chacoal(DCC) assay, high affinity binding sites were found in the cytosolic fraction with mean capacities of 3.42 and 4.71fmol/mg cytosol protein, respectively for progesterone receptors with stained positively for estrogen receptors and only 2 cases of tumor were stained positively for progesterone receptors with immunohistochemical technique. In addition, the most convincing evidence for the absence of estrogen and progesterone receptors was obtained by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) and Southern blot hybridization using oligo nucleotide probes which is complementary to the fragments of the human estrogen and progesteone recepotrs messenger ribo nucleic acid(mRNA). In 24 neuroepithelial tumors, we were not able to find any expression of mRNAs coding for the estrogen and progesteone receptors. From the present study, it is concluded that estrogen and progesteone receptors are geneally absent in neuoepithelial tumors. This study suggests that estrogen and progesteone receptors would not be involved in neuroepithelial tumors and therefore have no current significance as makers for adjuvant medical therapy of most neuroepithelial tumors.