High expression of sperm-associated antigen 5 correlates with poor survival in ovarian cancer

Sperm-associated antigen 5 (SPAG5), a spindle-binding protein, regulates the process of mitosis. The present study focused on the relationship between SPAG5 expression and the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of ovarian cancer.

First, we used the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to analyze SPAG5 expression in ovarian cancer and its clinical relevance. Subsequently, qPCR test was used to detect SPAG5 mRNA expression in 20 cases of ovarian cancer. The expression of SPAG5 protein in a tissue microarray containing 102 cases of ovarian cancer was detected by immunohistochemistry. Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier survival analyses were performed to identify the prognostic factors for the 102 ovarian cancer patients.

In the GEO datasets, SPAG5 mRNA expression was significantly higher in ovarian cancer tissues than that in normal ovarian tissues (P < 0.001). qPCR and immunohistochemistry showed that SPAG5 expression in ovarian cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in paracancerous tissues (P = 0.002, P < 0.001). The high expression of SPAG5 in ovarian cancer was correlated with histological type (P = 0.009), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.001), distant metastasis (P = 0.001), TNM stage (P = 0.001), and prognosis (P = 0.001). The Kaplan-Meier curve indicated that rates of disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were even lower in patients with high SPAG5 expression. Multivariate analysis showed that SPAG5 expression (P = 0.001) and TNM staging (P = 0.002) were independent prognostic factors for the DFS of ovarian cancer.

These results suggest that high SPAG5 expression was correlated with multiple clinicopathological features of ovarian cancer and can be used as an evaluation indicator for a poor ovarian cancer prognosis.