Oncogene structure, function, and expression in breast cancer

The research of the past decade has made it clear that aberrant expression of genes that encode growth factors, their receptors, and other genes involved in normal cell growth and differentiation--so-called oncogenes--play important roles in determining the proliferative and invasive characteristics of malignant mammary neoplasms. The authors briefly review the topic of oncogenes and the relevance of oncogenes to breast carcinoma; also included is a description of current techniques commonly employed in the study of aberrant oncogene structure and function. Also presented is the authors' own work on oncogene expression in breast neoplasms, which implicates the neu, fms, PDGF-A and Ki-ras oncogenes in the control of mammary epithelial cell proliferation by autocrine and paracrine mechanisms.