Serum protein profile at remission can accurately assess therapeutic outcomes and survival for serous ovarian cancer.
BACKGROUND
Biomarkers play critical roles in early detection, diagnosis and monitoring of therapeutic outcome and recurrence of cancer. Previous biomarker research on ovarian cancer (OC) has mostly focused on the discovery and validation of diagnostic biomarkers. The primary purpose of this study is to identify serum biomarkers for prognosis and therapeutic outcomes of ovarian cancer.


METHODS
Forty serum proteins were analyzed in 70 serum samples from healthy controls (HC) and 101 serum samples from serous OC patients at three different disease phases: post diagnosis (PD), remission (RM) and recurrence (RC). The utility of serum proteins as OC biomarkers was evaluated using a variety of statistical methods including survival analysis.


RESULTS
Ten serum proteins (PDGF-AB/BB, PDGF-AA, CRP, sFas, CA125, SAA, sTNFRII, sIL-6R, IGFBP6 and MDC) have individually good area-under-the-curve (AUC) values (AUC = 0.69-0.86) and more than 10 three-marker combinations have excellent AUC values (0.91-0.93) in distinguishing active cancer samples (PD & RC) from HC. The mean serum protein levels for RM samples are usually intermediate between HC and OC patients with active cancer (PD & RC). Most importantly, five proteins (sICAM1, RANTES, sgp130, sTNFR-II and sVCAM1) measured at remission can classify, individually and in combination, serous OC patients into two subsets with significantly different overall survival (best HR = 17, p<10(-3)).


CONCLUSIONS
We identified five serum proteins which, when measured at remission, can accurately predict the overall survival of serous OC patients, suggesting that they may be useful for monitoring the therapeutic outcomes for ovarian cancer.
Center for Biotechnology and Genomic Medicine, Georgia Health Sciences University, Augusta, Georgia, United States of America ; Sino-American Cancer Research Institute at Nanjing University of Technology and Jiangsu Cancer Hospital, Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China ; Jiangsu Cancer Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China ; Institute of Translational Medicine, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China.
Jinhua
J
Wang
Ashok
A
Sharma
Sharad A
SA
Ghamande
Stephen
S
Bush
Daron
D
Ferris
Wenbo
W
Zhi
Mingfang
M
He
Meiyao
M
Wang
Xiaoxiao
X
Wang
Eric
E
Miller
Diane
D
Hopkins
Michael
M
Macfee
Ruili
R
Guan
Jinhai
J
Tang
Jin-Xiong
JX
She
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D001798:Blood Proteins / Q000378:metabolism*; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000097:blood / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy; D015996:Survival Rate
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D001798:Blood Proteins