Ovarian Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Ovarian Cancer, including details on symptoms, causes, treatment, information.

Expression of the c-Met in advanced epithelial ovarian cancer and its prognostic significance.

Ayhan A, Ertunc D, Tok EC, Ayhan A

Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of c-Met expression in advanced cases of epithelial ovarian carcinoma. Paraffin-embedded tissues from 41 stage IIIC primary ovarian adenocarcinoma were stained immunohistochemically for c-Met expression. The expression of c-Met was correlated with conventional clinicopathologic parameters and with overall survival of the patients. c-Met expression was found in 60.9% of cases. This clinicopathologic study showed that epithelial ovarian carcinomas with c-Met expression had higher histologic tumor grade and were more frequently associated with para-aortic lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05). In multivariate analysis, c-Met expression remained as a statistically significant predictor for survival with histologic grade. The patients with stage IIIC epithelial ovarian cancers whose tumors expressed c-Met were more likely to have high-grade tumors, have more para-aortic lymph node involvement, and have a significantly worse overall survival than those whose tumors were c-Met negative. In conclusion, c-Met expression might be a potential prognostic marker for patients with advanced-stage epithelial ovarian cancers.

Published 14 July 2005 in Int J Gynecol Cancer, 15(4): 618-23.
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