Abstract 1702: Sucrose nonfermenting 1-related kinase (SNRK) expression in ovarian cancer and correlation with clinical features

Objective: Human omental adipocytes promote migration and invasion of ovarian cancer cells and result in alterations in metabolism including increased AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and b-oxidation, which allow for use of lipids as an energy source. Sucrose nonfermenting 1-related kinase (SNRK) is a member of the AMPK family of serine/threonine kinases, which are activated by starvation and stress conditions. The goal of this study is to describe the expression of SNRK in human ovarian cancer tissue. Methods: Tissue was collected from patients undergoing surgery for serous ovarian cancer or benign indications. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to detect SNRK expression. SNRK+ cells were compared between benign and malignant tissue, and statistical significance between positivity and clinicopathologic variables was determined using the Mann-Whitney U test. Results: In the 31 samples analyzed, SNRK demonstrates a nuclear staining pattern. IHC shows increased SNRK+ cells in malignant tissue versus benign tissue (42.0% versus 31.3% positive nuclei, p Conclusions: This is the first study to describe SNRK expression in ovarian cancer tissue. We show that SNRK has a nuclear staining pattern and that expression is greater in malignant ovarian tissue compared to benign ovarian tissue, which may be due to more metabolic stress on cells with higher proliferation rates. SNRK expression appears to be lower in those with a higher disease stage and poor outcome potentially secondary to metabolic changes that occur once the disease metastasizes. We are currently examining SNRK expression in metastatic omental tumors in order to further explore expression differences between primary versus metastatic disease sites. Citation Format: Elizabeth E. Hopp, Erin Bishop, Stephanie Cossette, Ramani Ramchandran. Sucrose nonfermenting 1-related kinase (SNRK) expression in ovarian cancer and correlation with clinical features. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 1702.