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. 2021 May 18;11(1):10524.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-88780-w.

Clinical significance of circulating tumor cell related markers in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer before and after adjuvant chemotherapy

Meysam Yousefi  1   2   3 , Sara Rajaie  4 , Vahideh Keyvani  5 , Somayeh Bolandi  6 , Malihe Hasanzadeh  6 , Alireza Pasdar  7   8   9
Affiliations

Clinical significance of circulating tumor cell related markers in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer before and after adjuvant chemotherapy

Meysam Yousefi et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have recently been considered as new prognostic and diagnostic markers for various human cancers; however, their significance in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) remains to be elucidated. In this study, using quantitative real-time PCR, we evaluated the expression of EPCAM, MUC1, CEA, HE4 and CA125 mRNAs, as putative markers of CTCs, in the blood of 51 EOC patients before and/or after adjuvant chemotherapy. Our results demonstrated that, before chemotherapy, the expression of EPCAM, MUC1, CEA and HE4 mRNAs were correlated to each other. CEA expression was correlated with tumor stage (r = 0.594, p = 0.000) before chemotherapy, whereas its expression after chemotherapy was correlated with serum levels of CA125 antigen (r = 0.658, p = 0.000). HE4 mRNA showed the highest sensitivity both before and after chemotherapy (82.98% and 85.19%, respectively) and the persistence of this marker after chemotherapy was associated with advanced disease stage. The expression of CA125 mRNA had negative correlation with the other markers and with tumor stage and therapy response (evaluated by the measurement of serum CA125 antigen). Collectively, our results indicated a better clinical significance of tumor-specific markers (CEA and HE4 mRNAs) compared to epithelial-specific markers (EPCAM and MUC1 mRNAs).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Gel electrophoresis image (agarose 2%) of the amplification products obtained for our target genes. From the left, lane 1: molecular weight marker (100-pb DNA ladder); lanes 2–7: EPCAM (99 bp), MUC1 (71 bp), CEA (108 bp), HE4 (173 bp), CA125 (248 bp) and HPRT1 (131 bp).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relative expression levels of (A) EPCAM, (B) MUC1, (C) CEA, (D) HE4 and (E) CA125 mRNAs in EOC patients before and after adjuvant chemotherapy. (F) Concomitant detection of HE4 mRNA before and after chemotherapy is associated with higher levels of serum CA125 antigen (measured before chemotherapy) (*: p < 0.05, **: p < 0.01).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves for EPCAM, MUC1, CEA, HE4 and CA125 mRNA markers before and after chemotherapy.
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