nm23 expression in tissue sections and tumor effusion cells of ovarian neoplasms

Abstract

The genetic changes involved in the metastatic process of ovarian epithelial cancer remain undetermined. The expression of nm23, a putative metastasis-suppressor gene product, was assessed immunohistochemically in malignant and benign ovar-ian neoplasms, considering histology of tumors and clinical advancement of disease. Comparison of nm23 protein content in tissue sections and respective cyst and/or ascitic fluid cells was also performed. Significant heterogeneity of nm23 immuno-staining was observed, and no correlation with histological subtype of ovarian carcinoma was found. Expression of nm23 was higher in carcinomas compared with benign tumors. A significant trend to have a higher nm23 reactivity in ascitic fluid cells vs. primary tumors was observed. Our results indicate that the increase of nm23 reactivity is activated in the early stages of the disease and that the progression of ovarian carcinoma is accompanied by overexpression of nm23 protein. Our observations did not confirm the postulated role of nm23 as a suppressor gene in ovarian cancer. o 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Allelotyping defines minimal imbalance at chromosomal region 17q25 in non-serous epithelial ovarian cancers

“…Recently, HER2/neu gene ampli®cations has been found to occur only in the subset of ovarian tumors which display LOH of a number of chromosome 17 loci (Papp et al, 1996). In some studies, an increased expression of NME1 has been associated with a more aggressive phenotype (Leary et al, 1995;Mandai et al, 1995;Schneider et al, 1996), although this association remains controversial (Harlozinska et al, 1996). These data are all consistent with the high frequency of LOH chromosome 17 loci harboring these genes in tumors of high grade and stage.…”

Notch signaling during development requires the function of awd, the Drosophila homolog of human metastasis suppressor gene Nm23

“…It is a housekeeping gene involved in nucleotide synthesis and energy metabolism, and yet exhibiting specific developmental functions [6,24]. It was the first metastasis suppressor gene identified [4,74], yet exhibits oncogenic functions in some cancer cohorts [9,10]. We have previously shown that either loss-of-function or over-expression of awd can affect different aspects of epithelial morphogenesis.…”

“…Human and murine Nm23 has been shown in cancer cell xenografts to inhibit metastasis, but not primary tumor growth [8]. On the other hand, in other cancer cohorts, particularly those of ovarian cancers, up-regulated Nm23 levels have been correlated with poor prognosis [9,10], suggesting an oncogenic function. These discrepancies have so far been difficult to reconcile because the exact cellular function of Nm23 has remained unclear, although several molecular activities have been assigned to the Nm23 family of proteins.…”

Nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDPKs) in animal development

“…The level of NM23-H1 expression was inversely correlated with the metastatic potential for human solid tumors of epithelial origin such as breast, liver, colorectal, ovarian and lung carcinoma and for melanoma [7]. However, in other tumor types, such as ovarian cancers, neuroblastoma and hematological malignancies, upregulated NM23 levels have been detected from patient samples that correlate with a poor prognosis [8][9][10]. Thereafter, understanding the biological function of the Nm23 gene family was brought into focus through diverse results, suggesting that the regulation of many physiological processes was associated with this gene family (reviewed in [11]), such as cell migration [12], growth and differentiation [13,14], signal transduction, transcriptional regulation [15,16], and apoptosis [17].…”