Cell lines:
- Northern-blot analysis of 17 cell lines of various origin, including malignant ones, revealed expression of MAM mRNA only in the subset of breast cancer cell (BCC) lines: high expression in MDA-MB-415, low expression in MDA-MB-175, no expression found in MCF-7 BCC (Watson M.A and Fleming T.P., 1996).
Tumors:
- Mammaglobin was suggested to be a superior marker for PCR detection of breast cancer metastases in sentinel lymph nodes (Min C.J. et al., 1998).
- Since MAM expression seems to be restricted to breast tissue, breast tumors and breast cancer cell lines, its interest as a marker for the detection of carcinoma cells in the peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer (BC) was investigated. By RT-PCR, none of the samples from peripheral blood of 27 healthy individuals were positive, whereas 29 (25%) of 114 samples from BC patients were positive for MAM mRNA. Most of the positive patients had metastatic disease and/or elevated plasma
carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) levels. However, MAM mRNA was also detected in some of the patients without advanced disease or with low
CEA plasma levels. Aberrant MAM expression also occasionally occured in patients with malignancies (thymus carcinoma, mantle-cell lymphoma) other than BC. In conclusion, the specificity of MAM for the detection of BC cells in peripheral blood could be higher than observed with
CEA or
keratin 19 (KRT19) (Zach O. et al., 1999).
- Analysis of mammaglobin expression within 20 independent primary breast tumours and their corresponding axillary lymph nodes revealed that all 13 lymph nodes positive and none of the seven nodes negative for metastatic breast carcinoma by histology were mammaglobin-positive by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). These results suggest that mammaglobin could be a marker of axillary lymph node breast metastases (Leygue E. et al., 1999).
- Of 100 primary human breast tumors examined, 81 were strongly immunopositive for MAM protein. Staining was independent of tumor grade and histological type. Ten of 11 lymph nodes from patients with metastatic breast cancer contained detectable MAM mRNA, whereas MAM expression in uninvolved lymph nodes was undetectable (Watson M.A. et al., 1999).
- Using nested RT-PCR, the specificity and sensitivity of mammaglobin (hMAM),
epidermal-growth-factor receptor (EGF-R), and
cytokeratin 19 (CK-19) expression as markers for circulating carcinoma cells in the peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer were compared. Only hMAM mRNA expression in blood correlated with clinical parameters such as nodal status, metastasis, and CA 15-3 serum levels. hMAM transcripts detectable in blood by RT-PCR were found to represent the most specific molecular marker for hematogenous spread of breast cancer cells. With the nested RT-PCR method, aberrant
EGF-R mRNA expression might occasionally be found in hematological malignancies, whereas
CK-19 mRNA expression proved to be rather nonspecific (Grunewald K. et al., 2000).
Grunewald K. et al. (2000) Mammaglobin gene expression: a superior marker of breast cancer cells in peripheral blood in comparison to
epidermal-growth-factor receptor and
cytokeratin-19. Lab. Invest. 80, 1071-1077.
Leygue E. et al. (1999) Mammaglobin, a potential marker of breast cancer nodal metastasis. J. Pathol. 189, 28-33.
Min C.J. et al. (1998) Identification of superior markers for polymerase chain reaction detection of breast cancer metastases in sentinel lymph nodes. Cancer Res. 58, 4581-4584.
Watson M.A. and Fleming T.P. (1996) Mammaglobin, a mammary-specific member of the uteroglobin gene family, is overexpressed in human breast cancer. Cancer Res. 56, 860-865.
Watson M.A. et al. (1998) Structure and transcriptional regulation of the human mammoglobin gene, a breast cancer associated member of the uteroglobin gene family localized to chromosome 11q13. Oncogene 16, 817-824.
Watson M.A. et al. (1999) Mammaglobin expression in primary, metastatic, and occult breast cancer. Cancer Res. 59, 3028-3031.
Zach O. et al. (1999) Detection of circulating mammary carcinoma cells in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients via a nested reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction assay for mammaglobin mRNA. J. Clin. Oncol. 17, 2015-2019.
