Expression of RASSF1A in epithelial ovarian cancers

L.-J. Fu, S.-L. Zhang

Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China. zsl0909@sina.com

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• Oncology

BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer is the third most common cancer in female reproductive system. But ovarian cancer is hard to detect at early phase. It is very urgent to develop effective early diagnosis method for ovarian cancer. RASSF1A (Ras association domain family 1 isoform A) is a tumor suppressor, which modulates multiple apoptotic and cell cycle checkpoint pathways.

AIM: To find out the relationship between RASSF1A and ovarian cancer.

METHODS: We compared the expressions of RASSF1A gene in different ovarian cancer cell lines, and also in epithelial ovarian cancer tissues and normal ovarian tissues through RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) technique.

RESULTS: RASSF1A was expressed in HO8910 and HO8910PM cells, while RASSF1A mRNA was absent in SKOV-3 and OVCAR-3 cells. RASSF1A was expressed in 10 normal ovarian tissue samples (10/10, 100%), while RASSF1A was only expressed in 2 ovarian cancers tissue samples (2/47, 4.3%). The difference in the frequency was significant in tissue samples (100% vs. 4.3%, p < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: RASSF1A could be served as a potential molecular marker for diagnosing ovarian cancer at early phase.

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