Project description:Compare luteal and follicular phases of fimbria and ampulla tissue Fallopian tube epithelial cells for gene expression analysis of fimbria and ampulla specimens were obtained using LCM
Project description:The cell of origin of serious ovarian cancer is unknown. To create a mouse model for this lethal cancer and identify early cancer biomarkers, we conditionally deleted both Dicer (essential for microRNA biosynthesis) and Pten (a negative regulator of the PI3K pathway) in the female reproductive tract. Beginning at ~3-5 months, these Dicer/Pten mutant mice develop high-grade serious carcinomas that initiate in the stroma of the fallopian tube through a mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET), subsequently envelop the ovary, and then metastasize throughout the peritoneum, resulting in ascites and 100% lethality by 13 months. The fallopian tube cancers demonstrate upregulation of genes encoding known and novel secreted proteins that are potential biomarkers. This study uncovers a new paradigm for the initiation of high-grade serous ovarian cancer. We generated gene expression profiles of 8 human primary serious tumors, and 2 independent samples of human normal fimbria. We defined genes that were high or low in tumors relative to fimbria, and compared these results with those of the correponding mouse model.
Project description:We analysed the extracellular matrix (ECM) landscape of fresh, healthy tissues from human fallopian tube (FT), fimbria (FB, the tissue of origin of serous tubal intraepithelial lesions) and ovarian tissue (OV). The aim was to identify differentially expressed matrix proteins between FB and FT or OV which may promote the neoplastic transformation of serous tubal intraepithelial lesions (STICs) into high-grade serous ovarian cancer, HGSOC, and metastasis from the FB to the OV.
