Abstract: Objective : To develop a real-time fluorescence RT-PCR method for accurate detection of survivin mRNAexpression in breast cancer and to discuss the relationship between survivin expression and clinicopathologiccharacteristics and protein expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and CerbB-2. Methods : Atotal of 39 breast cancer tissues and their adjacent breast tissues were collected. The expression level of sur-vivin mRNA and the protein expression of VEGF and CerbB-2 were determined by the established real-timefluorescence RT-PCR method and immunohistochemistry, respectively. Results : The median level of survivinexpression in the 39 cancer tissues was 225,393 (75% CI; 44, 366-581, 709) copies per μg total RNA, whichwas significantly higher than that in the adjacent tissues 24, 119 (75% CI 5082-61, 081) copies/μg total RNA;P <0.0001. The level of survivin expression in the cancer tissues was much higher than in the correspondingadjacent tissues. The median of both ratios was 22.5 (75% CI; 8.4-71.3). The level of survivin expression incancer tissues was significantly correlated with tumor size ( P =0.01), invasion depth ( P <0.0001), lymph nodemetastasis ( P =0.018), ER status ( P =0.0043), and protein expression of VEGF ( P <0.0001) and CerbB-2 ( P =0.009). Conclusion : A new system to assess survivin mRNA expression in breast cancer was successfully de-veloped and its results were reliable and accurate. Survivin is overexpressed in breast cancer and its expres-sion is positively correlated with VEGF and CerbB-2 protein expression, suggesting a new strategy for target-ed therapy of breast cancer.