Expression of ERCC1 Protein in Biopsy Specimen Predicts Survival in Advanced Ovarian Cancer Patients Treated with Platinum-based Chemotherapy

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the expression of excision repair cross complementing 1 (ERCC1) protein I in tumor tissue was associated with resistance to standard carboplatin and paclitaxel (PC) combination chemotherapy in patients newly diagnosed with advanced epithelial ovarian carcinoma (EOC).

Methods: Fresh frozen tumor tissue was obtained from EOC patients. The protein expression levels of ERCC1 in tumor tissue were determined by Western blot analysis in 55 samples with advanced and metastatic EOC with different histologic subtypes; then these patients were treated with PC.

Results: The results showed that the clinical objective responses were significantly different in different categories of ERCC1 protein expression levels in patients with EOC. Time to progression (TTP) and overall survival (OS) in EOC patients previously treated with platinum-based chemotherapy were significantly longer in those with low expression compared with patients showing high expression of ERCC1 protein.

Conclusion: Our results revealed that ERCC1 protein expression could potentially be used to customize chemotherapy by defining subsets of patients who would benefit the least from platinum-based chemotherapy.