| Summary: | Ovarian cancer is routinely treated with surgery and platinum-based chemotherapy. Resistance is a major obstacle in the efficacy of this chemotherapy
regimen and the ability to identify those patients at risk of developing resistance is of considerable clinical importance. The expression of
calpain-1, calpain-2 and calpastatin were determined using standard immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray of 154 primary ovarian carcinomas
from patients subsequently treated with platinum-based adjuvant chemotherapy. High levels of calpain-2 expression was significantly associated
with platinum resistant tumours (P = 0.031). Furthermore, high expression of calpain-2 was significantly associated with progression-free
(P = 0.049) and overall survival (P = 0.006) in this cohort. The association between calpain-2 expression and overall survival remained significant
in multivariate analysis accounting for tumour grade, stage, optimal debulking and platinum sensitivity (hazard ratio = 2.174; 95% confidence
interval = 1.144–4.130; P = 0.018). The results suggest that determining calpain-2 expression in ovarian carcinomas may allow prognostic stratification
of patients treated with surgery and platinum-based chemotherapy. The findings of this study warrant validation in a larger clinical cohort.
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