Suppression of invasion and peritoneal carcinomatosis of ovarian cancer cells by overexpression of AP-2α

A previous report demonstrated that AP-2α favors the survival of ovarian cancer patients by clinical findings. However, the functional roles of AP-2α in human ovarian cancers have not been determined. To clarify the roles, we overexpressed AP-2α in SKOV3 human ovarian cancer cells, which originally possess little AP-2α. AP-2α overexpression changed cell morphology from spindle to epithelioid type and suppressed cell proliferation and invasion, which would be partially correlated with decreased phosphorylation levels of the erbB2, Akt and ERK pathways, increased E-cadherin and reduced pro-matrix metalloproteinase-2 levels. Moreover, nude mice intraperitoneally injected with AP-2α-overexpressing cells survived longer than those with neotransfected cells. The present data represent the first direct evidence that AP-2α plays a tumor suppressive role in ovarian cancer.