Glutathione Transferase GSTπ in Breast Tumors Evaluated by Three Techniques

The glutathione transferases are involved in intracellular detoxification reactions. One of these, GSTπ, is elevated in some breast cancer cells, particularly cells selected for resistance to anticancer agents. We evaluated GSTπ expression in 60 human breast tumors by three techniques, immunohistochemistry, Northern hybridization, and Western blot analysis. There was a significant positive correlation between the three methods, with complete concordance seen in 64% of the tumors. There was strong, inverse relationship between GSTπ expression and steroid receptor status with all of the techniques utilized. In addition, there was a trend toward higher GSTπ expression in poorly differentiated tumors, but no correlation was found between tumor GSTπ content and DNA ploidy or %S-phase. GSTπ expression was also detected in adjacent benign breast tissue as well as infiltrating lymphocytes; this expression may contribute to GSTπ measurements using either Northern hybridization or Western blot analysis. These results suggest that immunohistochemistry is the method of choice for measuring GSTπ in breast tumors.