Expression And Clinical Significance Of The Costimulatory Molecule B7-H6 In Ovarian Cancer

Objective: To investigate the expression of costimulatory molecule B7-H6 inovarian cancer and its clinical significance.Methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the B7-H6 protein expression in 112 cases of ovarian cancer microarray tissues and 10 cases of ovarian benign neoplansms were chosen as control. The correlation between the expression level of B7-H6 and patients’ clinic pathological parameters was evaluated by using chi-square test. The relationship between different expression levels of B7-H6 and postoperative prognosis of patients were compared by using Log-rank test.Results: The B7-H6 was characterized by diffuse brown staining and mainly expressed in cell membrane and cytoplasm. The expression rate of B7-H6 was 69.1%(76/110) in ovarian cancer tissues. The expression level of B7-H6 was significantly correlated with the distant metastasis of tumor and clinical stage of FIGO(P<0.05). The postoperative survival rate of the patients with higher B7-H6 expression was significantly poorer than those with lower B7-H6 expression(P=0.0456). There were no significant correlation between B7-H6 expression and patients’ age, pathological grade, tumor size or lymph node metastasis(all P>0.05).Conclusions: Our results suggest the costimulatory molecule B7-H6 was highly expressed in ovarian cancer tissues, and its expression level was significantly correlated with the distant metastasis of tumor, clinical stage of FIGO and patients’ prognosis, suggesting that B7-H6 might be involved with the carcinogenesis and development of malignant ovarian tumor and B7-H6 might play a potential role in clinical diagnostic and prognostic value of ovarian cancer.