Tissue Microarray Detection of Estrogen Receptor, Progesterone Receptor, and C-erbB-2 in Patients with Ovarian Cancer and a Preliminary Study on the Molecular Typing of Ovarian Cancer

We evaluated the expression of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and C-erbB-2 in patients with ovarian cancer using tissue microarrays (TMA) and preliminarily analyzed molecular typing data. Specimens from 119 ovarian cancer patients were collected and were analyzed by TMA. The expression of ER, PR, and C-erbB-2 was examined by IHC and the clinicopathological associations were analyzed. The results indicated that higher ER expression was observed in SC and EC, whereas PR exhibited a similar expression pattern, but relatively lower compared with ER expression. Conversely, very weak expression was observed in CCC and MC, especially for PR (All P < 0.05). C-erbB-2 exhibited no expression pattern differences among the different histological types (All P > 0.05), but exhibited higher positive expression in FIGO III and IV stages, whereas there was no difference in ER and PR expression among the different stages. Higher PR expression was observed in middle and highly differentiated tumors, whereas higher C-erbB-2 expression was associated with low degree of differentiation (P < 0.05). Patients with ER (+) PR (+) C-erbB-2 (-) had a better prognosis and patients with ER (-) PR (-) C-erbB-2 (+) had the worst prognosis. In conclusion, ER and PR tend to be highly expressed in less malignant ovarian cancer subtypes such as SC and EC. Ovarian cancer patients with ER/PR double-positive and C-erbB-2 negative expression patterns survive longer.