Expression of Ret finger protein correlates with outcomes in endometrial cancer

Ret finger protein (RFP) is a nuclear protein with transcriptional repressive activity that is highly expressed in a variety of human and rodent tumor cell lines. We examined the expression of RFP in human endometrial cancer and assessed its clinical significance. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections from endometrial cancer tissues were immunostained with the RFP antibody, and the staining intensity was evaluated. The clinicopathological factors examined were age, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage, tumor grade, myometrial invasion, and pelvic lymph node metastasis. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were evaluated using the Kaplan-Meier method, and multivariate analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard analysis. Of the 119 cancer tissues, 57 (47.9%) cases were positive for RFP immunoreactivity. RFP expression was not associated with any of the clinicopathological parameters examined. However, positive RFP expression significantly predicted poorer OS and PFS compared with negative expression (OS, P = 0.0011; PFS, P < 0.0001). In the multivariate analyses, positive RFP expression was an independent prognostic factor for survival in this study. RFP knockdown significantly impaired cancer cell migration and invasion in vitro with concomitant decreases of integrins beta1 and alpha2. Positive RFP expression is a predictive marker for an unfavorable clinical outcome in patients with endometrial cancer.