Description

Cervical cancer remains one of the most common cancers in women in terms of both incidence and mortality. Human Papilloma Virus carriage is a necessary condition for the development of these cancers but is not the only factor responsible for malignant transformation. Numerous molecular alterations come into play in the development of these tumours, involving the activation of oncogenes or the inactivation of tumour suppressor genes. Treatment of locally-advanced cancer is based on radiotherapy or a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Responses to anti-neoplastic treatments remain very heterogeneous from one woman to another. Predicting the response to these treatments would make it possible to envisage early therapeutic alternatives for patients identified as not very sensitive to standard treatments. IAPs (inhibitors of apoptosis proteins), which include XIAP, cIAP1 and cIAP2, are proteins involved in many cancers and capable of downregulating tumour cell apoptosis. It seems justified to investigate the role of these IAPs in resisting apoptosis-inducing anti-neoplastic treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The aim of our study is to assess the prognostic role of overexpression of IAPs in locally advanced cervical cancer treated exclusively with radio-chemotherapy. This research seems all the more important as IAP-inhibiting molecules are currently being studied in other types of cancer (ear, nose and throat cancers) and appear to have a very encouraging radiosensitising effect. The hypothesis is that overexpression of IAPs in patients treated for locally advanced cervical cancer with exclusive radio-chemotherapy has a prognostic role on the local recurrence rate at 24 months.