Expression of phosphorylated Akt and hTERT is associated with prognosis of epithelial ovarian carcinoma.

Abstract

Activation of human telomere reverse transcriptase (hTERT) is associated with the tumorigenic role of Akt. We aimed to evaluate the significance of Akt phosphorylation and hTERT expression on the prognosis of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Between 2005 and 2012, 92 EOC patients treated at the Seoul National University Hospital were included in this study. Paraffin-embedded sections from the tumors of EOC patients were stained with anti-hTERT and anti-phosphorylated Akt (pAkt) antibodies. Correlations of pAkt and hTERT expression with the clinicopathological factors were analyzed using SPSS software, version 17.0 (IBM, Chicago, IL, USA). In 92 EOC tissues, pAkt and hTERT were not associated with any clinicopathological factors. However, the disease-free survival rate of patients exhibiting coexpression of pAkt and hTERT was poor compared with that of the other patients (P = 0.013). Coexpression of pAkt and hTERT is a poor prognostic marker for EOC.