In light of the poor prognosis for ovarian cancer, research continues for innovative and efficacious treatment modalities. It is now widely accepted that new approaches for the treatment of ovarian cancers are pivotal in further improving prognosis of this disease. Secretory leukoprotease inhibitor (SLPI) is an 11.7-kDa non-glycosylated, serine protease inhibitor that has a broad inhibitory spectrum against serine protease. SLPI showed potential therapeutic inhibitory effects mediated by tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), TNF-α, death receptor (DR)-4, DR-5 and TNF receptor (TNFR)-I expression which lead to an activation of apoptosis pathway through Caspase-2, Caspase-8 and Caspase-9. We examined whether levels of SLPI protein expression correlated with clinicopathological characteristics in 58 ovarian cancer samples, and investigated the role of SLPI and its biological functions. SLPI expression showed a significant correlation between low expression of SLPI and amount of ascites (p=0.021), lymph node metastasis (p=0.011). We propose that SLPI could be considered a therapeutic target for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

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