Evaluation of survivin splice variants in pituitary tumors

Purpose Survivin is an apoptosis inhibitor, expressed in almost all types of human malignancies, but rarely in differentiated normal tissues. Recently, survivin gene splice variants with different anti-apoptotic activities have been reported. The current study was undertaken to examine the expression of survivin and its splice variants ∆Ex3 and 2β in pituitary tumors, and to correlate the amount of particular transcripts with clinical staging in pituitary adenomas. Quantitative detection of survivin and its splice variants ∆Ex3 and 2β transcripts in non-cancerous pituitary tissues (n = 12) and different types of pituitary tumor (n = 50).