Abstract
Suiqun Guo1,*, Yanyi Xiao1,*, Danqing Li4,*, Qingping Jiang3, Litong Zhu1, Dan Lin1, Huiping Jiang1, Wei Chen1, Lijing Wang1, Chunhua Liu1, Weiyi Fang1,2 and Li Lin1
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510630, P.R. China
2Cancer Center, Integrated Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510315, P.R. China
3Department of Pathology, Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College, Guangzhou, 510150, P.R. China
4Department of Healthy Management, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, 510515, P.R. China
*These authors contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to:
Weiyi Fang, email: fangweiyi1975@163.com
Li Lin, email: linlizsy@163.com
Keywords: endometrial carcinoma; phosphoglycerate kinase 1; glucose-regulated protein 78; immunohistochemistry; clinicopathological characteristics
Received: October 02, 2017 Accepted: November 16, 2017 Published: December 07, 2017
ABSTRACT
The aim of this study was to measure the expression patterns of PGK1 and GRP78 in normal endometrial tissues and endometrial carcinoma, and associations between their combined effects and the pathological features of endometrial carcinoma. We used 30 normal endometrial tissue samples and 130 endometrial carcinoma samples, and separately evaluated PGK1 and GRP78 protein expression by immunohistochemistry. Scores ranging from 0 to 9 were obtained by multiplying the percentage of positive cells by the staining intensity (0–3). Immunohistochemical analysis revealed increased PGK1 and GRP78 expression in the cytoplasm of endometrial carcinoma cells compared with that in normal endometrial tissues. High PGK1 expression positively correlated with the FIGO stage (P < 0.001), histological grade (P = 0.002), and lymph node status (P < 0.001). High GRP78 expression positively correlated with the pathological type (P = 0.0125), FIGO stage (P < 0.001), and lymph node status (P < 0.001). In addition, PGK1 overexpression was positively correlated with GRP78 overexpression in endometrial carcinoma patients (P < 0.001), and the concurrent expression of both oncogenes in endometrial carcinoma patients correlated significantly with the lymph node status (P < 0.001) and FIGO stage (P < 0.001). Patients with high PGK1 and GRP78 expression levels had poorer overall survival rates than those with low expression levels of both proteins (P < 0.001). Our results suggested that the co-occurrence of PGK1 and GRP78 expression is potentially an unfavorable factor for endometrial carcinoma progression.
