Some aspects referring the methodology of estradiol receptor investigations for clinical purposes.

During the last years it had been tried to standardize the dextran-coated charcoal method for estradiol receptor determinations in the field of investigations of mammary tumor tissue probes intensively. But disintegration and homogenization of the tissue had not rendered enough attention in this connection. We could show that intensive homogenization procedures result in worse saturation curves in contrast to sparing procedures if parallel tissue probes were investigated. Therefore the application of a sparing homogenization seems to be an important precondition to get a correct determination of estradiol receptors in human breast cancer tissues.