Background: Breast cancer is among the five most common cancers and ranks first among cancers diagnosedin Iranian women. Screening and treatment of this disease with molecular methods, especially regarding highincidences at early age and advanced stage, is essential. Several genes with altered expression have been identifiedby cDNA microarray studies in breast cancer, with the Bcl-2 gene indicated as a likely candidate. In this study, westudied Bcl-2 gene expression levels in parallel tumor and non-tumor breast tissues. Materials and Methods: Fortysamples including 21 tumor, 16 non tumor (marginal) and 3 benign breast tissues which were all pathologicallydiagnosed, were subjected to RNA extraction and polyA RT-PCR with the expression level of Bcl-2 quantifiedusing real-time PCR. Results: There is higher expression levels of the Bcl-2 gene in tumor samples comparedwith marginal samples, but not attaining significance(p>0.05). Bcl-2 expression in 14 (66.7%) of the cases oftumor samples and 9 (56.3%) cases of the marginal samples were positive. Comparison of the expression of theBcl-2 gene in histological grade showed that a high expression of Bcl-2 was associated with a high histologicalgrade (p<0.41). Conclusions: Our data suggests that dysregulated Bcl-2 gene expression is potentially involvedin the pathogenesis of breast cancer. Using gene expression analysis may significantly improve our ability forscreening cancer patients and will prove a powerful tool in the diagnosis and prognostic evaluation of the diseasewhilst aiding the cooperative group trials in the Bcl-2 based therapy project.
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