title: Serous borderline ovarian tumors in long-term culture: phenotypic and genotypic distinction from invasive ovarian carcinomas.
abstract: Serous borderline ovarian tumors (SBOTs) are differentiated, slow growing, noninvasive, and have a better prognosis than their invasive counterparts, but recurrence and progression to invasive carcinomas are common, and unlike high-grade serous carcinomas, they tend to be nonresponsive to chemotherapy. However, due to a lack of culture systems and animal models, information about the properties of SBOT and their changes with neoplastic progression is extremely limited. Our objective was to establish a cell culture model for SBOTs and to characterize their phenotype and genotype. We compared cultures derived from two SBOTs, one of which was a short-term culture containing a BRAF mutation but few other cytogenetic changes while the other culture developed into a spontaneously immortalized permanent cell line and had numerical and structural chromosomal abnormalities but lacked RAS/BRAF mutations. Both cultures formed whorl-like epithelial colonies and resembled low-grade invasive carcinomas by their secretion of CA125 and oviduct-specific glycoprotein, production of matrix metalloproteinases, E-cadherin expression, and telomerase activity. Other characteristics associated with neoplastic transformation, including invasiveness, anchorage-independent growth, and tumorigenicity, were not observed. Importantly, cell motility was reduced in both lines, likely contributing to the lack of invasiveness. The results reveal a striking phenotypic similarity between the two cell lines, regardless of their cytogenetic diversity, which suggests that their characteristic phenotype is regulated to a large degree by epigenetic and environmental factors. In conclusion, we have established the first permanent SBOT cell line, which provides a new model to elucidate the undefined relationship of SBOTs to invasive ovarian carcinomas.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada.
authors.forename: M M M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Woo
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Salamanca
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Symowicz
authors.forename: P C K
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Leung
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Oliveira
authors.forename: T G
authors.initials: TG
authors.lastname: Ehlen
authors.forename: C B
authors.initials: CB
authors.lastname: Gilks
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huntsman
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Auersperg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D015415:Biomarkers; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002465:Cell Movement; D005260:Female; D018628:Gene Dosage / Q000235:genetics; D005838:Genotype; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D009154:Mutation / Q000235:genetics; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology*; D010641:Phenotype; D013997:Time Factors; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured; D023041:Xenograft Model Antitumor Assays
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers