Immunohistochemical detection of WT1 protein in endometrial cancer.

The Wilms' tumor gene WT1 is overexpressed in various kinds of solid tumors. However, it remains unclear whether WT1 plays a pathophysiological role in endometrial cancer. A series of 70 endometrial cancer patients who had undergone a curative resection was studied to determine the correlation between WT1 expression, clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis. Tissue specimens were evaluated for WT1 expression by immunohistochemistry. The expression of WT1 was strong in 31 patients (44%) and weak in 39 patients (56%). WT1 overexpression was associated with advanced FIGO stage (p=0.0266), myometrial invasion (p=0.0477) and high-grade histological differentiation (p=0.0049). The expression level of WT1 was found to be a significant predictor of disease relapse in univariate analysis (p=0.0233), but not in multivariate analysis (p=0.4757). These results suggested that tumor-produced WT1 provided additional prognostic information in endometrial cancer patients.