Mutations of the estrogen receptor in endometrial carcinoma: evidence of an association with high tumor grade.

The majority (60-70%) of endometrial cancers express estrogen receptor. Typically, estrogen-receptor-positive endometrial tumors are associated with a more favorable outcome. Despite this, there is often a discrepancy between estrogen receptor expression and clinical outcome of the disease. Although little is known about the exact role of the estrogen receptor in endometrial malignancies, in breast cancer, where such information is abundant, a number of mutations of the estrogen receptor have been identified. To investigate whether mutations of the estrogen receptor gene occur in endometrial cancers we performed single-stranded conformational polymorphism analysis (SSCP) on 35 human endometrial tumors. We detected four point mutations in three different patients. Interestingly, all the mutations were detected in patients who had aggressive endometrial tumors (grade 3). Although we found the incidence of mutations of the estrogen receptor to be low (8.5%) and thus unlikely to be associated with the majority of endometrial cancers, further investigation is needed to elucidate the role of aberrant estrogen receptor expression in the progression of endometrial malignancies.