Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Jun 1;3(3):275-288.
doi: 10.2217/bmm.09.21.

Beyond CA125: the coming of age of ovarian cancer biomarkers. Are we there yet?

Dimitra Sasaroli  1 , George Coukos, Nathalie Scholler
Affiliations

Beyond CA125: the coming of age of ovarian cancer biomarkers. Are we there yet?

Dimitra Sasaroli et al. Biomark Med. .

Abstract

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States, despite its relatively low incidence of 50 per 100,000. Even though advances in therapy have been made, the OC fatality-to-case ratio remains exceedingly high, due to the lack of accurate tools to diagnose early-stage disease when cure is still possible. The most studied marker for OC, CA125, is only expressed by 50-60% of patients with early stage disease. Large efforts have been deployed to identify novel serum markers, yet no single marker has emerged as a serious competitor for CA125. Various groups are investing in combination approaches to increase the diagnostic value of existing markers, but many markers may still lie in under-explored areas of ovarian cancer biology, such as tumor vasculature environment and post-translational modifications (glycomics).

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Jemal A, Siegel R, Ward E, et al. Cancer statistics. CA Cancer J Clin. 2008;58:71–96. - PubMed
    1. Auersperg N, Wong AS, Choi KC, Kang SK, Leung PC. Ovarian surface epithelium: biology, endocrinology, and pathology. Endocr Rev. 2001;22:255–88. of interest - Overview of molecular mechanisms of development and neoplastic progression of ovarian surface epithelium. - PubMed
    1. Medeiros F, Muto MG, Lee Y, et al. The tubal fimbria is a preferred site for early adenocarcinoma in women with familial ovarian cancer syndrome. Am J Surg Pathol. 2006;30:230–6. - PubMed
    1. Callahan MJ, Crum CP, Medeiros F, et al. Primary fallopian tube malignancies in BRCA-positive women undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer risk reduction. J Clin Oncol. 2007;25:3985–90. - PubMed
    1. Crum CP, Drapkin R, Kindelberger D, Medeiros F, Miron A, Lee Y. Lessons from BRCA: the tubal fimbria emerges as an origin for pelvic serous cancer. Clin Med Res. 2007;5:35–44. of considerable interest - A review that summarizes the evidence that a significant proportion of ovarian cancers have fimbrial origin. - PMC - PubMed