Overexpression of centromere protein K (CENPK) in ovarian cancer is correlated with poor patient survival and associated with predictive and prognostic relevance

Yi-Chao Lee; Chi-Chen Huang; Ding-Yen Lin; Wen-Chang Chang; Kuen-Haur Lee

doi:10.7717/peerj.1386

Overexpression of centromere protein K (CENPK) in ovarian cancer is correlated with poor patient survival and associated with predictive and prognostic relevance

PeerJ. 2015 Nov 5:3:e1386. doi: 10.7717/peerj.1386. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Yi-Chao Lee¹, Chi-Chen Huang^#¹, Ding-Yen Lin^#^{2

3}, Wen-Chang Chang⁴, Kuen-Haur Lee³

Affiliations

¹ Graduate Institute of Neural Regenerative Medicine, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
² Institute of Bioinformatics and Biosignal Transduction, College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
³ Graduate Institute of Cancer Biology and Drug Discovery, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.
⁴ Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Ovarian cancer has a poor prognosis. Most patients are diagnosed with ovarian cancer when the disease has reached an advanced stage and cure rates are generally under 30%. Hence, early diagnosis of ovarian cancer is the best means to control the disease in the long term and abate mortality. So far, cancer antigen 125 (CA125) and human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) are the gold-standard tumor markers for ovarian cancer; however, these two markers can be elevated in a number of conditions unrelated to ovarian cancer, resulting in decreased specifically and positive predictive value. Therefore, it is urgent to identify novel biomarkers with high reliability and sensitivity for ovarian cancer. In this study for the first time, we identified a member of the centromere protein (CENP) family, CENPK, which was specifically upregulated in ovarian cancer tissues and cell lines and the overexpression of which was associated with poor prognoses in patients with ovarian cancer. In addition, the presence of CENPK significantly improved the sensitivity of CA125 or HE4 for predicting clinical outcomes of ovarian cancer patients. In conclusion, we identified that CENPK was specifically upregulated in ovarian cancer cells and can be used as a novel tumor marker of ovarian cancer.

Keywords: CA125; CENPK; HE4; Ovarian cancer.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Taipei Medical University (TMU100-AE1-B13 to WCC). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.