Uneven distribution of human papillomavirus 16 in cervical carcinoma in situ and squamous cell carcinoma in older females: A retrospective database study

Hormone producing gynecological tumors: pathologic entities and clinical significance

INTRODUCTION

Due to their derivation from the cell types involved in gynecologic hormonal networks, many gynecologic tumors may produce hormones. In a normal physiological setting, these hormones are essential for regulating the biology and function of gynecological organs, the ovary and uterus in particular. Overproduction of hormones by the tumor may lead to abnormal clinical manifestations of the patients and spillage of excess hormonal products into the blood. Abnormal elevation of serum hormones may be considered as biomarkers that are important to pathologists and clinicians in making precise tumor diagnoses and likely useful in monitoring the tumor burden/recurrence to guide patient treatment options. This review will discuss gynecologic neoplasms that produce hormonal biomarkers and assess their relevance to pathological diagnosis, evaluation for therapeutic response and monitoring disease progression.

AREAS COVERED

Studies involving hormonal production by a gynecologic tumor were candidates for inclusion in this review.

EXPERT COMMENTARY

Serum hormonal biomarkers have clinical utility both in the diagnosis of gynecologic neoplasms and clinical monitoring of treatment efficacy and recurrence.

Fra-1 is downregulated in cervical cancer tissues and promotes cervical cancer cell apoptosis by p53 signaling pathway in vitro

Cervical cancer is a potentially preventable disease; however, it is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Cervical cancer is thought to develop through a multistep process involving virus, tumor suppressor genes, proto-oncogenes and immunological factors. It is known that human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is necessary but insufficient to cause malignancy. At present, the etiology of cervical carcinoma remains poorly understood. In this study, we found that the expression of FOS-like antigen-1 (Fra-1) gene was downregulated in cervical cancer compared with the adjacent non-cancerous tissues by RT-qPCR, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and western blotting techniques. To uncover the effect of Fra-1 on cervical cancer, we tested and confirmed that Fra-1 significantly inhibited the proliferation of HeLa cells by MMT assays in vitro. At the same time, overexpression of Fra-1 promoted apoptosis of HeLa cells. To explore the possible mechanism of Fra-1 in cervical cancer, we tested the expression levels of key molecules in p53 signaling pathway by western blotting technology. The results showed that p53 was downregulated in cervical cancer compared with the adjacent non-cancerous tissues, but MDM2 proto-oncogene, E3 ubiquitin protein ligase (MDM2) was upregulated in cervical cancer. In vitro, the p53 was upregulated and MDM2 was downregulated in HeLa cells with Fra-1 overexpression. In summary, our results suggested that Fra-1 expression is low in cervical cancer tissues and promotes apoptosis of cervical cancer cells by p53 signaling pathway.