Overexpression of MMSET in endometrial cancer: a clinicopathologic study

Endometrial cancer is a common gynecologic malignancy. It has been reported that overexpression of multiple myeloma SET (MMSET) promoted cellular adhesion, clonogenic growth, and tumorigenicity in other carcinomas. Therefore, the authors expected to investigate whether MMSET overexpression is an independent prognostic marker in endometrial cancer.

Immunohistochemistry was performed to examine the expression of MMSET in 161 endometrial cancer specimens and 62 normal endometrium specimens. The correlation of MMSET expression with clinicopathological parameters was assessed using χ(2) analysis. Patients' survival was analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier and log-rank tests. Cox regression was used for the multivariate analysis of prognostic factors.

MMSET immunoreactivity was overexpressed in endometrial cancer compared with normal endometrium (P < 0.001). Moreover, MMSET expression was correlated with FIGO stage, histological grade, depth of myometrial invasion, lymph node metastasis, and vascular/lymphatic invasion. Furthermore, Patients with positive MMSET expression had significantly poorer overall survival and disease-free survival compared with patients with negative expression of MMSET (both P < 0.001, log-rank test). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that positive MMSET expression was an independent prognostic factor for both OS and DFS of patients with endometrial cancer (P = 0.008 and P = 0.048, respectively).

Overexpression of MMSET may contribute to the progression of endometrial cancer and also may serve as a new biomarker to predict the prognosis of endometrial cancer.