STK15 Polymorphisms and Association with Risk of Invasive Ovarian Cancer

STK15 is a putative oncogene that codes for a centro-some-associated, serine/threonine kinase, the normal function of which is to ensure accurate segregation of chromosomes during mitosis. Amplification of STK15 has been reported in ovarian tumors, suggesting a role in ovarian cancer pathology. STK15 is polymorphic with two single nucleotide substitutions (449t/a and 527g/a) in evolutionarily conserved regions causing amino acid changes (F31I and V57I). Two other nucle-otide substitutions (287c/g and 1891g/c) of unknown significance are in 5V and 3Vuntranslated regions (UTR), respectively. To learn more about the involvement of STK15 in ovarian cancer, we genotyped and hap-lotyped these polymorphisms in three population-based ovarian cancer case-control studies from the United Kingdom, United States, and Denmark with 1,821 combined cases and 2,467 combined controls and calculated risks for developing ovarian cancer. Geno-types of individual polymorphisms in control group