ras genes are thought to play an important role in human cancer since they have been found to be activated frequently in several types of human tumors. From preliminary studies it has been found however, that ras mutations are extremely rare in breast tumors and therefore it was of interest to examine the frequency of such mutations. In this study we examined 65 cases of primary breast carcinomas from paraffin blocks, for the presence of point mutations in codons 12 of the K-ras and H-ras genes. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique was used to amplify a codon 12 containing 157 bp and a 312 bp region of the K-ras and the H-ras genes respectively, followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis to identify the point mutations. Eight out of the 65 tumors (12.3%) were found to carry a K-ras mutation in codon 12 but none was found to carry a H-ras mutation. It is suggested that the mutational activation of the K-ras gene may be involved in the development of a small percentage of breast tumors.

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