When analysing the protein expression profile in primary ovarian tumours with regard to patient survival, we found that only patients with the expression profile ‘E-cadherin reduced and Snail positive’ showed a significantly (P=0.002; significant according to the adjusted significance level) higher risk for the occurrence of death with a hazard ratio of 5.91 (95% CI: 1.9–18.0) when compared to the reference group (Table 4A). Here, SNAI1 is linked to ovarian neoplasm.