Evaluation of wt1 gene expression as a diagnostic and prognostic marker in epithelial ovarian cancer

Abstract EN

The Wilms tumor gene 1 (WT1) is a tumor suppressor gene that encodes a zincfinger transcription factor that is inactivated in a subset of Wilms tumors.

It plays acrucial role in growth, development and proliferation of some embryonic and adultorgans.

In various types of hematopoietic and solid malignancies, WT1 is expressedas a tumor associated antigen (TAA) and it can also consider as a useful marker formonitoring of minimal residual disease (MRD) and targeted immunotherapy.

Theaim of the present study is to evaluate the expression levels of the WT1 considermRNA in the Paraffin-embedded tissue blocks from 86 patients with differentstages of newly diagnosed ovarian cancer and 14 samples of patients with benignovarian tumors tissues were used as a control group using a reverse transcriptasepolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).

The present study showed that WT1 mRNAwas expressed in 79 (79% ) of samples, 68 with ovarian cancer and 11 benignovarian tum or.

According to malignancy status the percentage of patients withWT1-positive gene expression was significantly higher in comparison with benigntumor patients.

The present study showed no significant correlation between WT1expression level and age, menopausal state and family history.

In correlation to thehistopathologic tumor types, the endometriod ovarian tumors showed statisticallysignificant differences in the level of WT1 gene expression comparing with othertumor types.

In correlation with tumor stages, although samples with stage I showedthe highest level of WT1 gene expression comparing with stage III, but statisticallyno significant difference was found between stages.

The present study resultsreflected the possibility of detecting of that gene transcript in benign as well as themalignant tumor samples but with wide differences in the sample percentages andlevel of gene expression which in turn reflect the value of WT1 gene as a usefultool for discriminating malignant ovarian tumor from non-malignant ones, on theother hand the elevated levels of expression of WT1 gene in stage I sample mayreflect the usefulness of WT1 for early detection of ovarian cancer.