Determination of E-cadherin and vimentin genes expression on the tumor specimens of ovarian cancer patients

Ovarian cancer is a leading metastatic disease. The epithelial ovarian cancer is one of the most common malignant cancers that usually remains asymptomatic up to metastasis stages, and most patient when diagnosed are in the advanced stage of the disease. Studies have shown that in the majority of epithelial cancers mesenchymal factor expression such as Vimentin increases, and the epithelial factor expression such as E-cadherin decreases, as a result, it causes an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The aim of this study was to determine the expression level of these genes and association between EMT phenomenon and development of ovarian cancer based on clinical and morphological findings.
In the present case series study, 70 samples were chosen from the tumor Bank of Cancer Institute taken from patients at Imam Khomeini Hospital, Tehran, Iran. The amount of expression of two genes, E-cadherin and vimentin, was investigated by real-time PCR method from February 2016 to September 2017. The RNA extraction was done manually, and then cDNA synthesis was performed; In each sample the expression level of vimentin and E-cadherin was measured with real-time PCR method. The patient’s clinical information with other data were analyzed with nonparametric statistical methods in SPSS software, version 19 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA).
There was a significant relationship between expression of vimentin gene and the stage (P=0.026) of the disease and metastasis (P=0.009), There was no significant relationship between vimentin gene expression and tumor grade (P=0.207), age (P=0.11), tumor size (P=0.71) and family history (P=0.6). There was a significant correlation between E-cadherin gene expression and metastasis (P=0.027), no significant correlation was found between E-cadherin gene expression with tumor grade (P=0.690), stage (P=0.753), age (P=0.09), tumor size (P=0.537) and family history (P=0.56).
According to the changes in expression of vimentin and E-cadherin genes in ovarian tumor cells, and association between these two genes with clinical and morphological findings and the role of these genes in the migration and invasion, we can use the both genes, vimentin and E-cadherin, as genes involved in the EMT process to assess disease progression and incidence of cell invasion in ovarian cancer.