Screening and Identification of Ovarian Cancers

Ovarian cancer is the first mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies. The incidence of ovarian cancer increased in recent 10 years and it has become the ninth cause of malignancies in the women in Taiwan. From the above-mentioned data, ovarian cancer indeed is a disease that should be respected, however, there were only few of research work focusing on it in Taiwan. Despite the widespread use of aggressive cytoreductive surgery and the introduction of chemotherapy regimens, the overall survival has changed little over the last two decades. The basic problem in treating epithelial ovarian cancer is that once it has spread beyond the ovary, it is exceedingly difficult to control and ultimately to cure. More than 70% of ovarian cancer patients were advanced stage when diagnosed. To study the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, progression, and metastasis of ovarian cancer will help us understand this disease and develop new treatment strategies for ovarian cancer in the future.

We have established an ascites-generating intraperitoneal tumor cell line-WF3 in the mouse model in our previous two-year project of NSC grant (grant number (NSC90-2314-B-002-457 and NSC91-2341-B-002-315). Our group found that, mesothelin, this molecule is highly related with the carcinogenesis, tumor progression and tumor metastasis in our animal model and human cancer tissues. To further evaluate the role of mesothelin in ovarian cancer and elucidate the potential of mesothelin as a target antigen for immunotherapy,