Prognostic significance of PIK3CA mutation in stage IIB to IVA cervical cancers treated by concurrent chemoradiotherapy with weekly cisplatin.

The standard treatment for locally advanced cervical cancer is cisplatin-based concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT). Although the activated PI3-kinase/Akt pathway is known to be involved in both cisplatin-resistance and radioresistance, to date, only a few studies have reported significant associations between PIK3CA gene mutational status and outcome by CCRT in the disease. The aim of this study was to clarify the prognostic significance of PIK3CA mutational status in cervical cancers treated by CCRT.We analyzed PIK3CA mutation in 59 patients with stage IIB to IVA cervical carcinomas primarily treated by CCRT with weekly cisplatin using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens before treatment. Fifty-seven of 59 patients (97%) had locally advanced cancers with stage IIIA to IVA. Clinicopathologic data and patient survival were retrospectively compared according to PIK3CA mutational status.PIK3CA mutation was found in 7 of 59 patients (12%). No significant differences in clinicopathologic characteristics were observed according to PIK3CA mutational status. Patients with wild-type PIK3CA showed significantly improved cancer-specific survival as compared with mutated patients (P = .044). Subsequent survival analyses revealed that PIK3CA mutation was a significant prognostic factor for poor overall survival [multivariate adjusted hazard ratio (HR), 3.9; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 1.3-11.8; P = .017] and cancer-specific survival (multivariate adjusted HR, 3.6; 95% CI, 1.2-11.0; P = .024).Together with previous published findings, the current study further supports the clinical significance of PIK3CA mutation in cervical cancer. Our observations suggest that molecular inhibitors targeting the PI3-kinase/Akt pathway may improve the outcome by CCRT in cervical cancers harboring PIK3CA mutation, providing significant implications for novel treatment strategy based on precision medicine in the disease.

Separate analysis of human papillomavirus E6 and E7 messenger RNAs to predict cervical neoplasia progression.

A few studies previously suggested that human papillomavirus (HPV) E6 messenger RNA (mRNA) may exist uniformly in all grades of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), whereas the detection rate of E7 mRNA may increase with disease progression from low-grade CIN to invasive carcinoma. The aim of this study was to clarify the different roles of E6 and E7 mRNAs in cervical carcinogenesis. The presence of each E6 and E7 mRNA was analyzed in 171 patients with pathologically-diagnosed CIN or cervical carcinoma. We utilized a RT-PCR assay based on consensus primers which could detect E6 mRNA (full-length E6/E7 transcript) and E7 mRNAs (spliced E6*/E7 transcripts) separately for various HPV types. E7 mRNAs were detected in 6% of CIN1, 12% of CIN2, 24% of CIN3, and 54% of cervical carcinoma. The presence of E7 mRNAs was significantly associated with progression from low-grade CIN to invasive carcinoma in contrast with E6 mRNA or high-risk HPV (HR-HPV) DNA (p = 0.00011, 0.80 and 0.54). The presence of both E6 and E7 mRNAs was significantly associated with HPV16/18 DNA but not with HR-HPV DNA (p = 0.0079 and 0.21), while the presence of E6 mRNA was significantly associated with HR-HPV DNA but not with HPV16/18 DNA (p = 0.036 and 0.089). The presence of both E6 and E7 mRNAs showed high specificity and low sensitivity (100% and 19%) for detecting CIN2+ by contrast with the positivity for HR-HPV DNA showing low specificity and high sensitivity (19% and 89%). The positive predictive value for detecting CIN2+ was even higher by the presence of both E6 and E7 mRNAs than by the positivity for HR-HPV DNA (100% vs. 91%). In 31 patients followed up for CIN1-2, the presence of both E6 and E7 mRNAs showed significant association with the occurrence of upgraded abnormal cytology in contrast with E6 mRNA, HR-HPV DNA, or HPV16/18 DNA (p = 0.034, 0.73, 0.53, and 0.72). Our findings support previous studies according to which E7 mRNA is more closely involved in cervical carcinogenesis than E6 mRNA. Moreover, the separate analysis of E6 and E7 mRNAs may be more useful than HR-HPV DNA test for detecting CIN2+ precisely and predicting disease progression. Further accumulation of evidence is warranted to validate our findings.