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Clinical significance of pmTOR expression in endometrioid endometrial carcinoma
Chel Hun Choi1, Ji-Soo Lee, Seong Rim Kim
1Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, Samsung Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Objective:
Endometrial adenocarcinoma has been proposed, due to frequent activation of the PI3K/AKT pathway, as a candidate neoplasm for treatment with mTOR inhibitors. However, data on the expression of mTOR in endometrial cancer are lacking.
Study Design:
We used immunohistochemistry to evaluate the expression of pmTOR in 62 endometrial cancer surgical specimens.
Results:
The pmTOR protein was diffusely expressed in the cytoplasm of neoplastic epithelial cells, showing variable intensity. According to the chosen cutoff value, 34 (54.8%) out of 62 patients were scored as pmTOR-positive. pmTOR expression was significantly decreased in carcinomas with deep infiltration into the myometrium (P=.009), though it was not correlated with disease stage or lymph node metastasis. Univariate analysis showed that increased expression of pmTOR was significantly associated with better disease-free survival (P=.021).
Conclusions:
We show for the first time an association between pmTOR and better survival in patients with endometrial cancer. Future studies to stratify endometrial tumors by pmTOR status are needed.