Overall Survival of Ovarian Cancer Patients Is Determined by Expression of Galectins-8 and -9

The evaluation of new prognostic factors that can be targeted in ovarian cancer diagnosis and therapy is of the utmost importance. Galectins are a family of carbohydrate binding proteins with various implications in cancer biology. In this study, the presence of galectin (Gal)-8 and -9 was investigated in 156 ovarian cancer samples using immunohistochemistry (IHC). Staining was evaluated using semi-quantitative immunoreactivity (IR) scores and correlated to clinical and pathological data. Different types of galectin expression were compared with respect to disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Gal-8 served as a new positive prognostic factor for the OS and DFS of ovarian cancer patients. Gal-9 expression determined the DFS and OS of ovarian cancer patients in two opposing ways—moderate Gal-9 expression was correlated with a reduced outcome as compared to Gal-9 negative cases, while patients with high Gal-9 expression showed the best outcome.