Ovarian cancer is a cancer that forms in or on an ovary. the pro-inflammatory cytokine migration inhibitory factor (mif) and its receptor cd74 have been proposed as possible therapeutic targets in several cancers. it increases tumor growth by favouring tumor cell proliferation and blocking apoptosis; after binding to cd74, it activates the pi3k/akt pathway. more recently, overexpression of mif has also been shown to be associated with epithelial-tomesenchymal transition (emt).
Methods
In-silico gene expression profiling using est database mining has a documented impact on gene discovery in mammalian systems. the approach follows the logic that a given set of ests is a representation of the transcriptome of that species, tissue or developmental stage. a key aspect of the in-silico approach is the efficient analysis of these very large est data sets, and the identification of key features between/among different gene populations (i.e. genes of potential interest). a relatively recent tool for in-silico database mining is digital differential display (ddd). 17 cdna libraries of cancer tissues were analyzed to determine genes that are specially expressed at ovarian cancer tissue, ddd was used. the varieties of tissues were as follows: adrenal gland tumor, human colorectal cancer, human mcf7 breast cancer cell line, human breast cancer tissue, dermoid cancer, gessler wilms tumor, pancreas tumor i, pancreas tumor iii, soares_parathyroid_tumor_nbhpa, prostate tumor , skin tumor i, testis tumor and uterus tumor i.
Results
The ddd results revealed that cd74 transcript in human have been over-expressed greater than 20 fold in ovarian cancer tissue in comparison to the other tissues.
Conclusion
High expression of cd74 is an independent prognostic factor for ovarian cancer patients.
