Comparative study of four extraction procedures for urokinase type plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 in breast cancer tissues

The urokinase type plasminogen activator (u-PA) and the plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) are among the best second-generation prognostic tissue factors in breast cancer. However, different extraction procedures and assay kits are used in different laboratories. A total of 79 breast tumour tissues stored in liquid nitrogen were analysed in this study. We compared u-PA and PAI-1 levels determined with the American Diagnostics (AD) kit after various extraction procedures. The median cytosolic extraction yield in the presence of 0.4 mol/l KCl, calculated relative to extraction in the presence of 10 ml/l Triton X100 when adapted to standard laboratory working hours (incubation for 2 h instead of 12 h) was 74.4% for u-PA and 85.8% for PAI-1. In addition, the correlations were acceptable. Cytosolic extracts prepared with KCl could permit optimal u-PA and PAI-1 assays while also enabling hormone receptors to be determined with the same specimens. Further studies with clinical data are now necessary to determine the prognostic relevance of this extraction procedure.