Proline-rich Protein 11 Overexpression is Associated With a More Aggressive Phenotype and Poor Overall Survival in Ovarian Cancer Patients

Abstract

Background: The proline-rich protein 11 (PRR11) is a newly identified oncogene that exerts a strong association with a poor prognosis in various kinds of human cancers, yet its role in ovarian cancer (OC) remains unknown. Thus, the study aims to evaluate the level of PRR11 protein expression and its function in human ovarian cancer.Methods: In the present study, we used immunohistochemistry analysis to evaluate the levels of PRR11 protein expression in human specimens from 49 OC patients who underwent curative surgery in the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University2007 to 2015.Results: In our analysis, 57.1% of the primary OC tumor tissue evaluated, presented over expression of PRR11. Meanwhile, survival analysis showed that the overall survival (OS) of patients presenting PRR11 over expression was significantly lower than the OS of the PRR11 negative patient group. Furthermore, in subsequent experiments we found that silencing PRR11 expression inhibited tumor cell proliferation and cell migration in vitro. In addition, cells subjected to PRR11 knockdown exhibited a decrease in tumor grow in vivo. The down regulation of PRR11 was acompanied by a decrease in N-cadherin and early growth response protein 1 (EGR1) expression.Conclusions: our results suggest that PRR11 may be considered as a potential target for prognosis assessment and gene therapy modalities for patients with OC.