Expression of p53 and CD34 in Surface Epithelial Tumors of Ovary

Abstract

Ovarian cancer accounts for 3 % of all cancers in females (1) . Owing to diagnostic difficulty of ovarian cancers at early stage, most of them are diagnosed when they are at metastatic stage, thus they account for increased number of deaths occurring in women due to genital tract tumors. Ovarian Carcinomas are currently divided into Type I ( low grade) and Type II ( high grade ) tumours. (1) p53 and CD34 have been reported to play an important role in the progression of ovarian cancer. However, only few studies focus on their expression in benign surface epithelial tumors compared to malignant surface epithelial tumors and further low grade tumors compared to high grade tumors in the malignant category. Tumour angiogenesis, evaluated by CD34 expression as intratumoral microvessel density and CD34 intensity index could be an important predictor of the aggressive nature of high grade ovarian carcinoma. Overexpression of p53 in ovarian tumors of both low-grade and high-grade ovarian tumors has been found to be associated with poor prognosis in most but not all studies. (2) In present study, Mean microvessel density, CD34 intensity index and p53 proportion scoring of High grade tumors was statistically significantly higher than Low grade tumors (p value <0.05). Infact, immunohistochemical staining for p53 has been utilized as a surrogate marker for mutational analysis in the diagnostic workup of carcinomas of multiple sites including ovarian cancers. (3) Implication of p53 and CD34 in predicting the metastatic potential of ovarian surface epithelial carcinomas has to be further analysed with larger sample size.