Sexual steroid hormone receptors profiles of ovarian carcinoma in Mexican women

Abstract

The significance of the presence of androgen receptor (AR), estrogen receptor alpha (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) in ovarian cancer patient survival has been a matter of numerous studies. This study was aimed to describe the expression profile of the three sexual steroid receptors in high-grade serous, endometrioid, mucinous and low-grade serous ovarian carcinoma and its association to the proliferation index in patients with primary ovarian carcinoma diagnosis, before any treatment. Eighty-one samples were obtained from the National Institute of Cancerology in Mexico City and were evaluated for the presence of AR, ER, PR and Ki67 by immunohistochemistry. The four subtypes of ovarian carcinoma displays a specific profile of the eight possible combinations of the steroid receptors with significant differences within the profile and the histological subtypes. High-grade serous carcinoma was characterized by a high frequency of both, triple-negative and AR+ ER− PR+ profiles. Endometrioid carcinoma presented a higher frequency of triple-positive profile. The presence of only AR+ profile was not observed in the endometrioid tumors. The relationship of the receptor profile with the proliferation index in the tumor epithelium shows that the expression of only ER is associated to a reduced proliferation index in endometrioid carcinoma. Steroid hormone receptor expression and co-expression could help characterize ovarian carcinoma.

High-grade versus low-grade serous carcinoma of the ovary – current differential diagnosis and perspectives

“…WT1 and p53 showed previous success for use in small biopsy specimens from extraovarian sites due to little variability between ovarian and omental sites 11 . In their study of sex steroid hormone receptors expressed in ovarian carcinomas, Gomora MJ 12 . However, other studies confirmed ER positivity in these tumors, associated with recurrent disease and peritoneal metastasis 13 .…”

Hormone receptor expression patterns define clinically meaningful subgroups of endometrioid ovarian carcinoma

“…A number of studies have included EnOC cases when investigating the prognostic impact of hormone receptor positivity on OC outcome [[13], [14], [15], [16],[19], [20], [21], [22]]; however, the majority of these studies have included fewer than 30 EnOC cases in the context of mixed histology cohorts [[14], [15], [16],19,20]. One study collected a relatively large series of EnOCs (84 cases), but did not perform histotype-specific analysis of outcome [13].…”

Expression of metalloproteinases MMP-2 and MMP-9 is associated to the presence of androgen receptor in epithelial ovarian tumors

“…The association of MMP-2 and MMP-9 with the expression of AR in the ovarian tumor analyzing the whole population is interesting as it provides evidence of the possible significance of the androgen receptor in ovarian tumors, being the most frequent receptor in ovarian cancer [20] associated to MMP-2 and MMP-9 which are Fig. 2 a Immunofluorescence for high grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) and endometrioid carcinoma.…”

“…On the other hand, sexual steroid hormone receptors (androgen receptor -AR-, estrogen receptor alpha -ERα-, and progesterone receptor -PR-) are present in the nucleus of epithelial cells in ovarian carcinoma [19,20] and their presence has been associated with disease-free and overall survival of the patients [21,22] with their effect on tumor cell survival having been evaluated in primary cultures of epithelial ovarian tumors [23].…”