Abstract
Endometrial carcinoma is the second most common gynecological malignancy of the female genital tract worldwide. Enhancer of zeste homolog 2 (EZH2), a critical component of the polycomb repressive complex 2, has been found to be involved in multiple biological processes and is overexpressed in several types of cancer. Previous studies have demonstrated that EZH2 is associated with endometrial carcinoma. The present study showed that EZH2 was overexpressed in complex hyperplasia, atypical hyperplasia and endometrial cancer, but not in simple hyperplasia and normal endometrium. Additionally, by analyzing the correlation between EZH2 expression and clinicopathological characteristics, the expression of EZH2 was found to be associated with myometrial invasion and lymph-vascular space invasion of endometrial cancer. Furthermore, small interfering RNA was utilized to investigate the role of EZH2 in endometrial carcinoma cell proliferation, and the results showed that EZH2 knockdown suppressed the proliferation of endometrial carcinoma cells in vitro. Therefore, these findings indicate that EZH2 expression may predict a more aggressive biological behavior in endometrial carcinoma and it may provide potential therapeutic targets for treatment of endometrial carcinoma.