Wilms’ tumor 1 (WT1) as a prognosis factor in gynecological cancers: A meta-analysis

The oncogenic role of Wilms’ tumor 1 (WT1) which is regarded as a promising target antigen for cancer immunotherapy has been demonstrated in many types of cancer, but the relationship between expression of WT1 and the prognosis value in gynecological cancer reminds unclear. We performed a meta-analysis with thirteen published studies including 2205 patients searched from PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Google Scholar, whose results are expressed by overall survival (OS) or disease-specific survival (DSS) or disease-free survival or relapse/recurrence-free survival (RFS) or progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with gynecological cancer. The hazard ratio (HR) with its 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to investigate prognostic of WT1 expression in patients with gynecological cancer. Finally, the overexpression of WT1 was borderlinely associated with poor OS (metaHR = 1.51, 95% CI = 0.98–2.31) in univariate model. We found a significant association with poor DSS (metaHR = 1.61, 95% CI = 1.24–2.08) and DFS/RFS/PFS (metaHR = 2.06, 95% CI = 1.22–3.46). The subgroup analyses revealed that the expression of WT1 predicted the poor DSS (metaHR = 1.82, 95% CI = 1.42–2.73), and DFS/RFS/PFS (metaHR = 2.51, 95% CI = 1.81–3.48) in patients with ovarian cancer. In summary, WT1 overexpression indicates a poor prognosis in patients with some gynecological tumors, but more studies are needed to confirm these findings.