Molecular Profiling of Circulating Cytokine Levels in Human Ovarian Cancer Patients

Growing evidence suggests that cytokines not only are associated with ovarian cancer development, drug resistance and metastasis, but also may provide valuable markers for ovarian cancer diagnosis and prognosis. Here, we determined the expression profiles of 43 plasma cytokines in ovarian cancer patients using this high throughput protein array technology developed in our laboratory.

The expression of 43 cytokines from 13 ovarian cancer patients and 12 normal women was determined simultaneously using human cytokine antibody microarray technology. The differential expression of cytokines was analyzed using the Student's t-test and two-way hierarchical cluster analysis approach.

Our data showed that 22 cytokines were significantly increased in the plasma of ovarian cancer patients compared to normal women (t-test, two-tailed, p<0.05). The results from cytokine antibody array assays were in agreement with the published data, but also revealed a new group of cytokines whose expression levels were altered in ovarian cancer. Cluster analysis suggested an interesting link between cytokine profile and ovarian cancer.

Human cytokine antibody arrays are a valuable tool to profile cytokine expression from patients' specimen. The cytokine profile may prove to be of diagnostic and prognostic significance in ovarian cancer.