RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Endometrial adenocarcinoma is a frequently occurring cancer in women, accounting for 42,000 deaths every year. Despite treatment with standard therapy, occurrence of remote metastases and local recurrences is high. Through help of RT-qPCR minimal residual disease could be detected and characterized, facilitating therapeutic decision making. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A number of marker genes were first tested in model systems and genes that performed best, were consequently used for the examination of 13 blood samples from endometrial carcinoma patients. RESULTS: Cytokeratin 19 and MIG7 were chosen for the analysis in patient samples. Both genes were found up-regulated in small tumours and in one large tumour, but no statistical correlations could be revealed between expression levels of these two genes and tumour characteristics. CONCLUSION: There seems to be a coherence between gene expression and the stage of tumorigenesis, but the number of samples is still too small, to be able to obtain statistical significant differences.
