Correlation of HLA-G Gene Expression with Various Prognostic Factors in the Tissue of Ovarian Carcinoma

Hong, Won Ki; Kim, Young Tae; Yoon, Bo Sung; Kim, Sang Wun; Kim, Sung Hoon; Kim, Jae Hoon; Kim, Jae Wook; Park, Yong Won

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between the expression of mRNA and protein of HLA-G and other clinicopathologic prognostic factors of ovarian cancer.
METHODS
43 patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer from 1997 to 2005 and 5 patients with normal ovarian tissue (controls) were enrolled in this prospective study. The patient group all went through baseline studies with staging laparotomy and adjuvant chemotherapy. Quantitative real-time RT PCR and Western blot analysis were used in detecting the expression of mRNA and protein of HLA-G.
RESULTS
The mRNA expression of HLA-G (2-delta delta Ct value) in cancer group were 1.21 (0-9), and 0.01 (0-0.02) in control group, which was statistically significant (P=0.005). The expressed protein levels did not show any difference between the cancer and control groups. There also was a significant relationship between the serum CA 125 at the time of diagnosis and the HLA-G protein levels (P=0.02). But the relationship between other clinicopathologic prognostic factors and the HLA-G protein levels were not statistically significant.
CONCLUSION
Our results showed that HLA-G mRNA expression level was much higher in ovarian cancer patient group than in those of control group. Therefore HLA-G maybe play an important role in carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer. Although the protein level of HLA-G had low significance with other prognostic factors, serum CA 125 showed a statistically significant relation with protein levels of HLA-G. Further studies based on the correlation between HLA-G and survival rate are needed to support HLA-G as a prognostic factor of ovarian cancer.