Steroid receptors and endometrial cancer.

Abstract

Like breast carcinomas, endometrial carcinomas are derived from sex steroid target tissue. Progress and research directed into the clinicopathologic relationship of steroid receptors and endometrial carcinomas have been hampered by many factors, including: limited numbers of patients with advanced-stage disease compared to the number with breast carcinoma; contamination of specimens with surrounding benign endometrial components which may contribute to total steroid binding; and amount of tissue required for standard biochemical assays. Nevertheless, several clinicopathological associations have been made for steroid receptor content of endometrial carcinomas. Receptor content appears to correlate with histological differentiation in that well-differentiated lesions have higher mean levels of receptor and more receptor 'positive' lesions than do poorly differentiated lesions. Furthermore, receptor levels and status appear to correlate with prognosis of primary endometrial carcinomas and response to hormonal therapy of advanced endometrial carcinoma. Newer techniques utilizing monoclonal antibodies to directly localize receptor in tissue specimens may lead to a greater understanding of the dynamics of receptor physiology in endometrial carcinomas, and may make possible more accurate predictions of clinical behavior by allowing the direct analysis of the receptor content of the malignant component within a tissue specimen.