Immunohistochemical Expression of P63 in Ovarian Tumors among Sudanese Women

Background: Ovarian cancer is a deadly illness with little understanding of its biology. The tumor suppressor p63 is a homolog gene of p53. P63 has an important role in the development and differentiation of reproductive epithelium and interacts with p53 in human tumorigenesis.

Objective: The study was aimed at assessing the immunohistochemical expression of p63 in benign and malignant epithelial ovarian tumors.

Methods: In this hospital-based analytical retrospective cross-sectional study, we evaluated at p63 immunoexpression in (80) formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded blocks from patients with ovarian tumors; 40 (50%) were malignant, and 40 (50%) were benign. Malignant samples with histological subtypes include 32 (40%) epithelial ovarian cancer samples and 8 (10%) granulosa cell tumors. We used a mouse monoclonal antibody against the p63 antigen (Dako), which identifies all p63 variations, and tumors were designated p63 positive if 5% or more cells showed nuclear immunostaining.

Results: We discovered that 90% of the samples expressing the gene were from benign ovarian tumors and 10% were from malignant ovarian tumors, with a p-value of 0.000. In terms of histological subtypes of malignant tumors, p63 expression was found in 7.5% of epithelial ovarian tumors and 2.5% of granulosa cell tumors, with a p-value of 0.792.

Conclusion: Patients with ovarian tumors are often older than 50 years old. Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most histologically significant kind of ovarian cancer. p63 expression was low in ovarian cancer, and there was no significant relationship between p63 expression and ovarian tumor subtypes or tumor grade.