A significant relationship involving the altered expression of interacting calcium-dependant cell adhesion molecules was found to be important for both aspects of this disease. EOC is fifth leading cause of female cancer death. The advent of microarray technology has allowed the study of diseases such as epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) to occur at an unprecedented level of molecular resolution.
The universality of the molecular events regulated by these genes in order to mediate survival and/or the malignant potential of EOC was evaluated. Optimisation of cDNA Microarray Tumour Profiling and Molecular Analysis of Epithelial Ovarian Cancer - Free ebook download as PDF File (.pdf) or read book online for free. invasive cancer to studies of similar and disparate cancer types was carried out. The molecular signatures identified were technically and biologically validated before bioinformatic analyses to identify the key biological processes and functional relationships they represent.Ĭomparison of the gene expression signatures deduced for patient survival and serous low malignant potential vs. These analyses generated several validated sets of differentially regulated genes, many of which were clinically relevant or previously implicated in other cancer types. These data are interrogated to identify gene expression patterns related to overall length of patient survival and the phenotypic differences between the invasive and low malignant potential EOC subtypes. The findings from these comparisons are then used to create and analyse two clinically annotated dataset of EOC specimens. A number of factors with the potential to impact on the spatial distribution of gene expression are also described and a novel method for quantification of this type of systematic bias is proposed.
The cell line RNA was found to be the most suitable choice for a large-scale tumour profiling study based on the diverse criteria applied. An evaluation of reference RNA options was conducted, in which gene expression data generated using either a pool of RNA sourced from a diverse range of cell lines, or from a cohort of EOC specimens was compared.
This thesis first describes the optimisation of several aspects of the microarray work flow and demonstrates their impact on the sensitivity and robustness of cDNA microarray data. This information could one day be used to develop novel screening methods and therapeutic approaches based on individual tumour profiling. It is hypothesised that gene expression profiling can shed light on the molecular events responsible for EOC development and progression. The prognosis of women diagnosed with this disease is often extremely poor, partially due to the difficulty of detection in its early and most treatable stages. The advent of microarray technology has allowed the study of diseases such as epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) to occur at an unprecedented level of molecular resolution.ĮOC is fifth leading cause of female cancer death world wide.