PTK7 protein is decreased in epithelial ovarian carcinomas with poor prognosis.

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most common tumor of ovary. PTK7 plays an important role in tumors. Till now, there is no report about the role of PTK7 in ovarian epithelial neoplasms. This study aims to investigate the expression of PTK7 protein in epithelial ovarian tumors, and its relationship with clinical pathological characteristics. In this study, immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression of PTK7 protein in 14 samples of normal fallopian tube epithelium and 204 cases of epithelial ovarian tumor. The relationship between the expression of PTK7 and pathological indicators was statistically analyzed. Kaplan-Meier survival function was used to analyze the prognosis. The expression of PTK7 was found in 92.86% (13/14) of normal fallopian tube epithelium and 45.10% (92/204) of epithelial ovarian tumor tissues. The expression level of PTK7 was significantly decreased from the benign, the intermediate type, to malignant ovarian epithelial tumors (P < 0.001), and decreased from the normal control group to serous carcinomas (P < 0.001). The expression of PTK7 was significantly different in type I and type II epithelial ovarian carcinomas (P < 0.001). PTK7 protein expression was associated with clinical stages (P = 0.038) and metastases (P = 0.038) in ovarian borderline serous tumors. PTK7 protein expression was associated with clinical stages (P = 0.011), WHO grading (P = 0.004), and MDACC grading (P < 0.001) in ovarian serous carcinomas. The survival analysis showed that patients with negative expression of PTK7 protein had a poorer outcome than those with positive expression (P = 0.017). These results indicate that PTK7 protein may be a tumor suppressor and a potential prognostic marker in ovarian serous carcinomas.