Washington, March 8: A collaborative study has brought to light markers unique to the cells of blood vessels running through ovarian tumors, fostering hopes of improvement in the screening, diagnosis, and treatment for the disease.
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and universities in Greece and Italy used a laser technique to isolate blood vessel cells from 21 ovarian tumors and four normal ovarian tissue samples, which helped them determine which genes the vascular cells expressed.
The researchers identified more than 70 markers that were present in large amounts in the blood vessels of cancer tissue but not in the vessels of normal tissues, and of them, they studied in detail 12 markers that had not previously been linked to tumor blood vessels.
"Some of these genes, depending on how highly expressed they were in the tumor vasculature, were also prognostic of a patient's survival. We suspect when these genes are highly expressed it may be a sign of a tumor that's able to grow blood vessels more efficiently, and therefore is more aggressive. This may help us down the road in treatment decisions," says lead study author Dr. Ronald Buckanovich, Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Michigan Medical School.
While many of the genes identified during the study have been shown previously to be involved in tumor vasculatures for other cancer types, several of the markers appear to be new.
Further, the researchers were able to determine that some of the markers present in large amounts in ovarian tumors were not expressed by normal ovaries or other healthy organs.
They also found that such markers were not present in normal reproductive tissues that experience blood vessel growth, such as the placenta or endometrium, suggesting that those markers might be specific to tumors and might not be mistaken for normal blood vessel growth in women of reproductive age.
Although these results are preliminary, the researchers believe that they could be a new avenue to develop drugs that would target the blood vessels and strangle the tumor.
"All the things we could hope for are present with this approach: It has potential for diagnosis, imaging, treatment and prognosis. It needs more work and much more confirmation, but our early results are promising," Buckanovich says.
"In some cases, these are genes that many people have never worked on before," the researcher adds.
The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. (ANI)