The role of human nonmetastatic clone 23 type 1 (nm23-H1), a metastasis-associated gene, is less clear-cut in cancer of uterine cervix; therefore, we investigate its expression in cancer tissues and its correlation with clinicopathologic variables and survival of patients.
Importantly, nm23-H1 expression was a significant prognostic factor in cervical cancer, reduced expression being associated with lower survival (p = 0.022) in univariate analysis.
Our aim was to investigate whether the appearance of the proteolytic phenotype had any correlation with the expression of H-ras and nm23-H1 genes in carcinoma of the uterine cervix.
Reduced expression of the nm23-H1 protein, increased expression of the c-erbB-2 protein, and a combined nm23-H1-negative and c-erbB-2-positive expression have prognostic significance in patients with adenocarcinoma, whereas they may not be associated with the prognosis of squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix, nm23-H1 and c-erbB-2 proteins may have different functions according to the subtype of cervical carcinoma.
A strong association has been observed between reduced expression of Nm23 gene and acquisition of metastatic behaviour in some tumour cells including breast cancer and melanoma, but not in others such as colon cancer, neuroblastoma, and cervical cancer.