Cancer Research Lab

Research designed to gain a clearer molecular picture of ovarian tumor vasculature has identified a number of tumor vascular proteins that may serve as biomarkers of the disease, as well as molecular targets for ovarian cancer and a variety of other solid tumors.

“We identified a tumor vascular cell profile of ovarian cancer that was distinct from the vascular profile of normal ovary and other tumors,” report Dr. George Coukos from University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia and colleagues in the March 1st issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Using immunohistochemistry-guided laser-capture microdissection and gene expression profiling, they identified 70 genes as potential tumor vascular markers that were differentially expressed in vascular cells from 21 human epithelial ovarian cancer and 4 healthy ovaries.

“From the cancer vascular profile, we validated 12 novel tumor vascular markers and demonstrated that three tumor vascular markers have prognostic value,” the team reports.

“Several of these could function as tumor biomarkers or therapeutic targets; they were expressed at high levels in ovarian cancer and were either absent or expressed at significantly lower levels in normal tissues,” Dr. Coukos and colleagues point out.

Importantly, they discovered that overexpression of any one of three ovarian tumor vascular markers by vascular cells correlated significantly with reduced disease-free survival (all p < 0.005).

Some of the ovarian tumor vascular markers identified were expressed by a variety of other tumor types, which suggests that they may have prognostic potential outside of ovarian cancer. Additional studies are needed to determine the clinical relevance of the biomarkers identified, the investigators conclude.