Fibronectin 1: A Potential Biomarker for Ovarian Cancer

Object. Ovarian cancer is one of the most common cancers among females with high mortality rate, due to most patients diagnosed at the advanced stage of the disease. Seeking new biomarkers for ovarian cancer detection and progress indication is really important for the patients. Methods. OVCAR3 and A2780 are the two common cell lines that are used for ovarian cancer studies. The different invasion and migration abilities were observed by scratch tests and transwell experiments in our preliminary study. Gene chip was used to screen the expression gene in these two different cell lines, and then, the differentially expressed genes (at least 2-fold difference, P value < 0.05) were analyzed using KEGG. Result. Fibronectin 1 (FN1) was found to be the most strongly correlated with the invasion and migration abilities of the OVCAR3 cells. Real-time PCR and FN1 knockout cell line was conducted and confirmed this finding. Based on the Oncomine database analysis, comparing with normal people, ovarian cancer patients exhibited high levels of FN1 expression. Additionally, higher FN1 expression was found in patients with higher FIGO stages of cancer. Conclusion. FN1 could be a new biomarker for ovarian cancer detection and progress indicator.