Biological behavior of ovarian carcinoma and its relation to therapy

Structured abstract Hypothesis Cancer stem cells (CSCs) are subpopulations of cells which could contribute to tumor growth, metastasis formation and chemoresistance. CSCs can be detected by surface markers assessed by immunohistochemistry methods. A typical surface marker for CSCs is CD44 (standard form). We assumed, that CD44(s) could serve as a prognostic factor and marker of chemoresistance in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. The aim of study 1. To recruit group of patients with histologically verified epithelial ovarian carcinoma. 2. To evaluate prognostic significance of known prognostic factors in our series of patients. 3. To assess the expression of CD44 in specimens of primary tumors and specimens of implantation metastasis using immnunohistochemistry and analyze their correlation. 4. To evaluate the expression of CD44 in relation to known prognostic factors. To analyze the significance of CD44 expression evaluation for overall survival, disease-free interval and chemoresistance. To find CD44 positivity cut-off by using statistical methods Materials and Methods A retrospective study was performed on 87 patients with histologically verified EOC. All patients were tested for primary tumor specimens, 48 of them were tested with regard to both specimens of primary tumor and implantation..