Stathmin, also called
oncoprotein 18, is a founding member of the family of microtubule-destabilizing
proteins that play a critical role in the regulation of mitosis.
Stathmin is non-expressed in normal tissues, but
stathmin gene is expressed at high levels in many human
malignancies and the relationships between the levels of this gene expression in
tumors and prognosis of the patients have been addressed. In this report, we explored the relationships between
stathmin mRNA expression in ovarian
carcinoma tissues and clinicopathological parameters. We collected and analyzed
paraffin wax-embedded ovarian
tumor biopsy tissues from 42
ovarian cancer patients in our hospital. We employed RT-PCR method and performed a densitometric analysis to determine the ratio of
stathmin relative to
beta-actin as an internal marker. Results showed that the
stathmin mRNA expression was detected in all the ovarian
carcinoma tissue samples and those samples with
metastasis had higher levels of
stathmin mRNA expression in initial biopsy specimens (P<0.05). Moreover, the levels of
stathmin mRNA expression between samples with and without
metastasis showed a statistically significant difference (P<0.05).