Proteomics of ovarian cancer: functional insights and clinical applications

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been an increasing interest in applying proteomics to assist in understanding the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer, elucidating the mechanism of drug resistance, and in the development of biomarkers for early detection of ovarian cancer. Although ovarian cancer is a spectrum of different diseases, the strategies for diagnosis and treatment with surgery and adjuvant therapy are similar across ovarian cancer types, increasing the general applicability of discoveries made through proteomics research. While proteomic experiments face many difficulties which slow the pace of clinical applications, recent advances in proteomic technology contribute significantly to the identification of aberrant proteins and networks which can serve as targets for biomarker development and individualized therapies. This review provides a summary of the literature on proteomics’ contributions to ovarian cancer research and highlights the current issues, future directions, and challenges. We propose that protein-level characterization of primary lesion in ovarian cancer can decipher the mystery of this disease, improve diagnostic tools, and lead to more effective screening programs.

FSCN1 Promotes Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition Through Increasing Snail1 in Ovarian Cancer Cells

“…Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological tumor and ranks the fifth in the cause of death for women suffered from tumor [1,2]. The poor prognosis of ovarian cancer patients is mainly attributed to cancer metastasis, which highlights the importance of the elucidation of the molecular control of migration and invasiveness of ovarain cancer cells.…”

Functional characterization of a panel of high-grade serous ovarian cancer cell lines as representative experimental models of the disease

“…While many cancers have witnessed significant decrease in mortality in recent years due to advances in early detection and improved treatment options, OC death rates have remained relatively constant, with a 5-year survival rate under 30% for the past 40 years [2–4]. Discovery of effective therapeutics has been hampered by the lack of similarity between experimental models and real disease.…”

Circulating biomarkers in epithelial ovarian cancer diagnosis: from present to future perspective

“…The development of sensitive and fast protein microarray and high-throughput mass spectrometry (MS) techniques has led to the discovery of several candidate biomarkers highly expressed in OC compared to healthy controls (8,33). However, the specificity of candidate biomarkers must be successively assessed in the verification phase and finally both the sensitivity and specificity should be evaluated in a clinical setting (34).…”