Yu et al. Journal of Experimental & Clinical Cancer Research 2010, 29:107 http://www.jeccr.com/content/29/1/107 R E S E A R C H Open Access Expression of the apoptosis-related genes BCL-2 and BAD in human breast carcinoma and their associated relationship with chemosensitivity Bing Yu, Xin Sun, Hong-yan Shen, Feng Gao, Yuan-ming Fan, Zhi-jun Sun* Abstract Objective: To evaluate the expression of BCL-2 and BAD genes in tissues of breast carcinoma and investigate the relationship between the expression of BCL-2 and BAD in breast cancer cells with chemosensitivity. Methods: Immunohistochemical technique was used to detect the expression of BCL-2, BAD in 10 normal breast tissues, 10 breast fibroadenoma tissues, 40 youth human breast carcinoma tissues, 40 menopause human breast carcinoma tissues. And to detect the expression of ER, PR in 80 human breast carcinoma tissues. 20 Surgical samples of breast cancer, diagnosed by pathology, were obtained from The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University. The cancer sample cells were cultured separately in the incubator at 37°C, 5% CO2 in vitro. The rate of inhibition of cancer cells in 4 kinds of anticancer drugs– Epirubicin Adriamycin (EADM),5-Fluorouracil (5-Fu), Navelbine(NVB) and Diaminedichloroplatinum (DDP), were assayed by MTT method. Results: The expression of BCL-2, BAD genes in young human breast carcinoma tissues were lower than that in menopause human breast carcinoma tissues (P < 0.05). There was a negative correlation between the positive expression rate of BCL-2 and histologic grade or the lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05). There was a positive correlation between the expression rates of BCL-2 and of ER, PR (P < 0.05). The expression of BAD had no relationship with the expression of ER, PR, histologic grade and the lymph node metastasis(P = NS). Sensitivity rates of 20 breast cancer cells in 0.1 × PPC within 48 h in vitro were 30% EADM,20% 5-Fu,45% NVB and 25% DDP. Respectively, the rate of inhibition of EADM,5- Fu, NVB and DDP were significantly higher in the BCL-2 negative cancer cells than in the BCL-2 positive cancer cells. A negative correlation was found between expression of BCL-2 and chemosensitivity for all the 4 anticancer drugs. The inhibition rates of EADM and NVB were significantly lower in the BAD negative cancer cells than in the BAD positive cancer cells. A positive correlation was found between expression of BAD and chemosensitivity for Epirubicin. Conclusion: The expression of BCL-2 and BAD can be used as prognosis factors of breast cancer. Detection of the BCL-2 protein expression level, particularly, combined with the detection of the expression of BCL-2 and BAD as well as ER and PR were helpful in confirming the prognosis of breast carcinoma. The combined detection of BCL-2 and BAD may be markers for predicting the responses to anticancer drugs. Background Breast carcinoma is endangering the health of women, its development process involves decreasing expression of apoptosis gene. BCL-2 is a anti-apoptosis gene, the function of BAD gene is promoting the apoptosis of * Correspondence: cq_sunzj@sina.com Department of Breast and Thyroid Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital, Chongqing Medical University, 74th Linjiang Road, Yuzhong District, Chongqing, 400010, China Full list of author information is available at the end of the article cell. The balance between BCL-2 and BAD can effect the apoptosis of cancer cell. In our study, immunohisto- chemistry was used to detect the expression of BCL-2 and BAD in breast carcinoma, in addition, to analyze the relationship between the expression of the two genes and the expression of ER, PR histologic grade, clinical stage and the lymph node metastasis. Chemotherapy is an important therapy to breast can- cer. Although there have been introduced new che- motherapeutic agents and new chemotherapy, the effect © 2010 Yu et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.