Abstract 3644: The PSP94αprostasin pathway and early detection of ovarian cancer

Objective: Our long-term goal is to better understand the mechanism of tumor development in human epithelial ovarian cancer. The short-term goal is to identify a biomarker for early detection of this malignancy. Methods: qPCR was performed for PSP94 expression using SYBR® Green reagents kit in 3 pairs of tumor and normal samples of ovarian cancer patients and 4 ovarian cancer cell lines on ABI 7500 Fast Real-Time PCR System. Overexpression of PSP94 or prostasin by cDNA transfection was performed in ovarian cancer cell lines. The expression levels of PSP94 and prostasin after cDNA transfection were determined by western blot analysis. Results: In gene expression analysis by qPCR, we found that PSP94 expresses in tumor tissues of ovarian cancer patients and cancer cell lines but not in normal ovarian specimens. Our investigation of the relationship between PSP94 and prostasin by cDNA transfection assay demonstrated that expression of prostasin was increased in the PSP94 overexpressed cells. In contrast, PSP94 expression did not change in the prostasin-forced-expression cells. This suggests that the two genes most likely share part of a regulation network and that PSP94 appears to be an upstream regulator of prostasin. Conclusions: We conclude that PSP94 expression occurs only in tumor samples and PSP94 and prostasin share a signaling pathway. We hypothesize that alteration of PSP94-prostasin pathway may be an early event in the development of epithelial ovarian cancer; PSP94 appears to be an upstream regulator that modulates prostasin expression. Thus, PSP94 seems to play an important role in tumorigenesis and may hold great promise as a biomarker for early detection of human epithelial ovarian cancer. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3644. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-3644