Browsing by Author "Colanglo, Kia Kristiina"

High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (HGSOC) is the most lethal gynecological cancer in developed countries. Due to lack of early detection methods or targeted treatment options the mortality has not reduced significantly in decades. Standard treatment includes surgery and platinum-taxane chemotherapy, the treatment is very seldom curative. More studies are needed to understand the biology and mechanisms defining chemoresistance, and to develop more personalized treatment schemes. Cancer stem cells are known to resists chemotherapy and therefore this study focuses on the expression of putative cancer stem cell biomarkers in HGSOC. Using Immunohistochemistry (IHC) and Immunofluorescence (IF), a Tissue-Micro Array (TMA) containing 95 patients’ samples was generated and tested for four different potential biomarkers: SOX2, BMI1, C-MYC and ALDH1A1. Scanned slides were evaluated, and results were analyzed using Rstudio as well as Excel analytics. We report that chromogenic IHC staining of individual markers revealed no major differences between expression and Platinum-Free Interval (PFI). Instead, some of the co-expressions and especially triple expressions analyzed with IF resulted in major difference in PFI. Beyond that, ALDH1A1 and SOX2 were found together extremely rarely, and it indicates that it is possible that these two biomarkers are normally not expressed in the same tumor cells. Further study options as well as possible implications are discussed along with the clinical value of the findings.