| Endometrial carcinoma is the most common neoplasm of the female genital tract and the fourth most common cancer in women overall. The largest risk factor for endometrial carcinoma is exposure to unopposed estrogen. In the classical pathway of estrogen activation, estrogen binds to an estrogen receptor and recruits coactivators that increase its transcriptional activity. In contrast, certain compounds known as Selective Estrogen Receptor Modulators (SERM), cause estrogen receptor to recruit corepressors that decrease its transcriptional activity. The coactivators SRC-1, SRC-2, and SRC-3 showed higher mRNA expression in the malignant tissue as compared to the benign tissue. The corepressors N-CoR and SMRT also showed increased expression in malignant endometrium. Expression levels of coregulator mRNA were highly correlated with each other as well as with progesterone receptor mRNA. There was no correlation between coregulator mRNA expression and known prognostic markers such as grade, stage, and estrogen receptor-alpha protein expression. |
