c-erbB-2 oncogene expression in ovarian cancer.

One hundred and four common epithelial malignancies of the ovary were stained for c-erbB-2 using an affinity-purified polyclonal antibody 21N. Twenty-three out of 104 (22.1 per cent) showed cytoplasmic staining alone. Nine out of 104 (8.7 per cent) showed both membrane and cytoplasmic staining. In a multivariate Cox analysis with other known risk factors the relative risk for cytoplasmic staining alone was 1.456 (chi 2 = 1.71, P greater than 0.1) and for membrane and cytoplasmic staining 0.316 (chi 2 = 7.95, P less than 0.005). These results do not support an adverse prognostic effect of c-erbB-2 in our patients.