New fresh look on vimentin's role in endometrial cancer
Vimentin, component of the cytoskeleton, has so far been associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, increased metastatic potential and, hence, poor prognosis in many cancer types. However, our newest study indicates that its role in endometrial cancer might be opposite to what we believed thus far.
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Our newest findings challenge the general opinion that vimentin only promotes processes important for cancer development.
The absence of vimentin in preoperative biopsies of endometrial cancer patients associated with worse overall survival even after adjusting for age, hystologic type, and estrogen and progesterone receptor status. Not only that, but the absence of vimentin correlated with increased lymph node metastasis and recurrence in endometrial cancer.
These new findings are particularly interesting for patients which have thus far been classified as low-risk for recurrence, but experienced recurrence anyway. Our results indicate that they might greatly benefit from including the analysis of vimentin expression in the initial diagnostic work-up in order to determine if they would need additional treatment to prevent or postpone recurrence.
Our findings underline yet again the importance of disease-specific research and the need for conservatism when extrapolating data.
Loss of vimentin expression is associated with poor survival in endometrial cancer.