The relationship between oncogene expression and clinical outcome in endometrial carcinoma

The mechanism of oncogenesis is extremely complicated and controlled by various factors, most of which are based on cell proliferation, tumor invasion, neovascularization, and inhibition of apoptosis. We have investigated the relationship between thirty three oncogenes expression and histopathological prognostic factors of endometrial carcinomas, including clinical stage, histological grade, presence of invasion to greater than one-half the myometrium, clinical outcome, and survival rate. Scoring on the basis of the percentage of positive cells indicated that Plks, EphB4, ephrin-B2, Id1, CaMKIV, c-Ets1, Elf-1, and survivin expression were significantly associated with PCNA-labeling index, clinical stage, histological grade, the presence of invasion to greater than one-half the myometrium, and clinical outcome. Survival data were available for all patients, and univariate Cox regression analysis showed that Plks, CaMKIV, Elf-1, and survivin expression were significantly associated with poor prognosis. Our results demonstrate that some oncogenes expression in endometrial carcinoma correlate with the malignant potential of these tumors. Thus, in addition to being of diagnostic value, modulation of these oncogenes activity in the tumors by chemotherapeutic agents or gene therapy may prove to be of therapeutic value. In this review, we demonstrate the biologic behavior of seven novel molecules (Plks, Eph/ephrin, Id family, CaMK, c-Ets1, Elf-1, and survivin) in the endometrial carcinoma.