Ovarian cancer is the most fetal gynecological malignancy leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide. Diagnosis of ovarian cancer is hard at an early stage when 90% of patients can be cure due to lack of symptom and early detection markers. Therefore, most of patients with this disease are detected at advanced stage (Stage Ⅲ-Ⅳ) occurring low survival rate (< 30%). More than 90% of ovarian carcinomas are originated from ovarian surface epithelium and it is called as epithelial-derived ovarian cancer (EOC). Recently, previous studies have been showed ovarian cancer could arise from oviduct and oviduct-related genes are up-regulated in hen EOC, the most relevant animal model. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to determine: 1) the distribution and localization of oviduct developmental-regulatory genes including A2M, GAL11, SERPINB3, SERPINB11 and SPP1 in normal and cancerous ovaries of laying hens; 2) the expression pattern of target genes among normal and cancerous ovarian cells of hens and human ovarian cancer cell lines; and 3) the functional role of target gene in human EOC. Results of the present study showed five genes were abundant only in the glandular epithelium of cancerous ovaries of hens. And SERPINB3 was abundant in the nucleus of both chicken and human ovarian cancer cells whereas SERPINB11 was abundant in the cytoplasm. Further, several microRNAs were discovered to influence SERPINB3, GAL11 and SPP1 expression via their 3’-UTR which suggest that post-transcriptional regulation influences target gene expression in chickens. Moreover, in 109 human patients with EOC, 15 (13.8%), 66 (60.6%) and 28 (25.7%) patients showed weak, moderate and strong expression of SERPINB3 protein, respectively. Strong expression of SERPINB3 protein was a prognostic factor for platinum resistance, and for poor progression-free survival. Therefore, oviduct developmental-regulatory genes, especially SERPINB3, may play an important role in ovarian carcinogenesis and be a novel biomarker for predicting platinum resistance and a poor prognosis for survival in patients with EOC.

• Whasun Lim(Department of Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University)