Inhibition of mortalin expression reverses cisplatin resistance and attenuates growth of ovarian cancer cells

• Mortalin overexpression relates to drug resistance in human ovarian cancer.
• Inhibition of mortalin promotes cisplatin-induced ovarian cancer cell apoptosis.
• Inhibition of mortalin increases translocation of p53 to the nucleus.
• Inhibition of mortalin decreases phosphorylated level of Akt and ERK1/2.

The heat shock protein mortalin is frequently overexpressed in human malignancies. In this study, an assessment of mortalin expression using ovarian cancer tissue microarrays suggested that mortalin overexpression might be related to drug resistance. Using a short hairpin (sh) RNA approach, we evaluated the effect of reducing mortalin expression in vitro and in vivo. The results of our study show that elevated levels of mortalin expression increase cancer cell resistance to cisplatin-induced cytotoxicity and identify mortalin as a potential therapeutic target for improved treatment of drug-resistant ovarian cancer.