Molecular analysis of normal oviduct, STIC and invasive serous cancer. Homo sapiens

High-grade serous cancer (HGSC) progresses to advanced stages without symptoms and the 5-year survival rate is a dismal 30%. Recent studies of ovaries and fallopian tubes in patients with BRCA mutations revealed that pre-metastatic HGSC is found almost exclusively in the fallopian tube in a lesion termed “serous tubal intraepithelial carcinoma” or STIC. We have performed laser captured microdissection (LCM) of normal oviduct, STIC and invasive serous cancer from each patient. A whole-genome transcriptome analysis comparing between normal oviduct, STIC and invasive serous cancer were performed. We demonstrated a clear molecular progression from normal to STIC, which shared the gene expression patterns with invasive serous cancer, suggesting a new set of genes as basis of novel detection and therapeutic approaches to HGSC at its earliest stage. Overall design: Uisng frozen sections, LCM was performed to collect normal oviduct, STIC and invasive serous cancer regions from one patient. Samples were collected from 6 independent patiens. Total RNA was isolated with Picopure RNA isolation kit. We used affymetrix HuEx-1_0-st-v2 array to hybridize samples from 6 patients.