Prohibitin is a gene that has been ascribed to inhibit cell growth. The ability to negatively regulate cell growth is a necessity for all living organisms. The failure in an organism to provide adequate negative growth control in the developmental period may result in a malformation. This malformation may result in the formation of a tumor. Because negative control is so critical, specific genes have evolved to actively prevent uncontrolled cell growth. Prohibitin has been associated with development, differentiation, cell cycle regulation, and apoptosis. These processes are fundamental to our understanding of ovarian cancer development. Therefore, this proposal focuses on approaches to examine the role of a novel growth inhibitor, prohibitin, in ovarian cancer.

We hypothesize that overexpression of prohibitin in ovarian cancer cells will substantially induce arrest in cell growth and promote differentiation. There is no information known about prohibitin gene function in ovarian cancer biology, yet the subject has great intrinsic interest. In this proposal, we have provided for the first time preliminary results on the localization, protein, and RNA content of prohibitin in normal and disease human ovaries. Clearly, from a clinical perspective, an understanding of prohibitin gene involvement in ovarian somatic cell growth and differentiation during the normal physiological development, as well as its role in the etio-pathogenesis of ovarian tumorigenesis is important.