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ObjectivesOvarian cancer is the most common cause of death among women with gynecologic malignancies and the third leading cause of cancer death in women. The characteristic of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the inchoate metastasis to abdominopelvic cavity, while the infiltration or metastasis of the tumor is a major factor for death rate increasing. Many factors, such as age, clinical stage, tumor grade, and residual tumor are suspected to play a role in the prognosis of EOC. And recently, much interest has been focused on the cell adhesion molecules in tumor invasion and metastasis. Cell adhesion system disorder is an important process in human malignant tumors’growth, invasion and metastasis. Changes of cell adhesion properties play a critical role in malignant tumor occurrence and progression. Tumor suppressor in lung cancer 1 (TSLC1) is a newly identified tumor suppressor which encodes protein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily cell adhesion molecules, involved in cell adhesion, cell movement, signal transduction and immune regulation. Recently, it was reported that TSLC1 gene expression was reduced to different degrees or lost in non-small-cell lung cancer, cervical cancer, breast cancer, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, pancreas cancer and other epithelial cancers, and often close related with Pathological grade, clinical stage, invasion and metastasis of malignant tumors and prognosis of patients. However, TSLC1 expression and its association with clinicopathologic characteristics in EOC has not been evaluated. To investigate the expression and clinic significance of TSLC1 in EOC, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (SP) are used to study the expression of TSLC1 mRNA and protein in normal ovarian tissues, benign, borderline and malignant ovarian tumors, and the relationship between TSLC1 expression and clinicopathologic characteristics is analyzed. MethodsSixty ovarian tissue samples including 30 cases of EOC,10 cases of borderline epithelial tumors,10 cases of benign epithelial tumors,10 cases of normal ovarian tissues were obtained from patients who underwent surgical operations at the Department of Gynecology of ShengJing Hospital, the Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University from January 2007 to November 2008. EOC samples were graded based on Gynecologic Oncology Group Pathological criteria including 17 patients of well and moderately differentiated and 13 patients of poorly differentiated, and staged in accordance with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) 2000 system including 13 patients of FIGO stage I-II and 17 patients of FIGO stage III-IV. Pathological types:27 cases of serous adenocarcinoma and 3 cases of mucinous cystadenoma.There were 7 patients of ovarian carcinomas with lymph node metastasis, 9 patients of ovarian carcinomas without lymph node metastasis. Normal ovarian tissues were obtained from the normal ovaries of donors during surgery for cervical cancer at the Department of Gynecology of ShengJing Hospital. None of the patients studied had received immunosuppressive treatments such as radiotherapy or chemotherapy prior to surgery. The expression of TSLC1 was detected by Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (SP) in 10 normal ovarian tissues,10 benign epithelial tumors,10 borderline epithelial tumors and 30 EOC and the relationship with the clinicopathologic characteristics of EOC was further studied. The SPSS 13.0 software (SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) was used for statistical analysis. Student t-test, ANOVA (analysis of variance) were used for analyzing means of samples, A p-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.ResultsWith the disease severity of ovarian tumors degraded, the expression levels of TSLC1 mRNA and protein increased. (P<0.05).The expression levels of TSLC1 mRNA and protein in epithelial ovarian cancer (0.27±0.17; 0.25±0.11) were significantly lower than those in epithelial benign tumors (0.47±0.19; 0.40±0.15) and normal ovarian tissues (0.67±0.14; 0.44±0.13) respectively(P< 0.01). Furthermore, the positive expression of TSLC1 mRNA and protein of stageⅢ-Ⅳand positive metastasis of lymph node were significantly lower than those of stageⅠ-Ⅱand negative metastasis of lymph node in epithelial ovarian cancer. (P< 0.05, respectively). The expression of TSLC1 in epithelial ovarian cancer showed a significant correlation with the clinical stage, lymph node metastasis, but not with the age, pathological type and histology grade.Conclusions1. The loss or reduction of the TSLC 1 expression may involve in the occurrence and development of epithelial ovarian cancer.2. The loss or reduction of the TSLC1 expression may be pertinent to deterioration and metastasis of human epithelial ovarian cancer.
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