Defining a prognostic marker panel for patients with ovarian serous carcinoma effusion

Advanced-stage ovarian carcinoma is a highly lethal malignancy, yet no widely accepted prognostic panels exist to date in this disease. The objective of this study was to define such panel for patients with ovarian serous carcinoma effusions. The expression by immunohistochemistry and clinical role of 41 previously studied cancer-associated proteins was analyzed in 143 effusions from patients diagnosed as having advanced-stage (International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stages III-IV) ovarian serous carcinoma treated with platinum-based chemotherapy at diagnosis. Survival analyses were performed separately for patients with prechemotherapy and postchemotherapy effusions. In univariate analysis of patients with primary diagnosis prechemotherapy effusions, survivin was associated with longer progression-free survival (P =.03), whereas survivin (P =.009), signal transducer and activator of transcription 5B (P =.011), and p21-activated kinase-1 (P =.04) were markers of longer overall survival. In univariate analysis of patients with disease recurrence postchemotherapy effusions, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (P =.004), human leukocyte antigen-G (P =.013), mammalian target of rapamycin (P =.04), and nucleus accumbens 1 (NAC-1) (P =.046) were associated with poor progression-free survival, whereas peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (P =.013), claudin-3 (P =.019), activator protein-2γ (P =.04), insulin-like growth factor-2 (P =.04), claudin-7 (P =.042), and fatty acid synthase (P =.048) were markers of poor overall survival. In Cox multivariate analysis for prechemotherapy cases, survivin and fatty acid synthase were independent predictors of better progression-free survival (P =.006 and P =.048, respectively), and signal transducer and activator of transcription 5B and heat shock protein 90 were independently associated with better overall survival (P =.033 and P =.006, respectively). None of the biological markers was an independent prognostic factor in recurrent disease. The present study represents the first attempt at prognostic stratification of multiple tumor markers in one cohort of patients with ovarian serous carcinoma effusions.