Phosphate and tensin homolog deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) is a potent tumor suppressor gene, localized to chromosome 10q23, and shows extensive homology with auxilin and tension. PTEN has variety roles involved in cell proliferation, invasion, and migration in tumorigenesis of solid tumors. In this study, the expression of the PTEN in the ovarian epithelial tumors, including benign, borderline malignancy, and adenocarcinomas was investigated.

Immunohistochemical expression of PTEN were analyzed in formalin fixed tumor tissues of 20 benign cystadenomas, 22 borderline tumors, and 49 malignant ovarian cancer. In the same tissue extracts, single nucleotide polymorphism were studied.

Most of benign and borderline ovarian tumors revealed strong positive reaction, but a few cases showed negative reaction or weak positive reaction. In adenocarcinomas, 33% of cases was negative, and 43% was focal weakly staining, grade 1. The remainder of adenocarcinomas showed strong nuclear staining. In SNP assay, A/A allele of rs1234213 shows low frequency, but A/G allele reveals high frequency. C/C allele of rs701848 shows high frequency, and rs9651492 is not detected polymorphism.

These results suggest that loss of PTEN expression is associated with tumorrigenesis of ovarian epithelial tumors, and is related with single nucleotide polymorphism.