Analysis of the Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 4 (MAP2K4) tumor suppressor gene in ovarian cancer

Abstract

Background: MAP2K4 is a putative tumor and metastasis suppressor gene frequently found to be deleted in various cancer types. We aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis of this gene to assess its involvement in ovarian cancer.Methods: We screened for mutations in MAP2K4 using High Resolution Melt analysis of 149 primary ovarian tumors and methylation at the promoter using Methylation-Specific Single-Stranded Conformation Polymorphism analysis of 39 tumors. We also considered the clinical impact of changes in MAP2K4 using publicly available expression and copy number array data. Finally, we used siRNA to measure the effect of reducing MAP2K4 expression in cell lines.Results: In addition to ..