HE4 Gene Overexpression in Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is one of the common malignancies within women and the fifth cause of cancer death in women all over the world. Recent developments in Genomics and Proteomics technologies have led to the identification of unknown candidate markers for the diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) has recently been supported to monitor the recurrence or the progression of epithelial ovarian cancer. Therefore, this study aimed to measure the expression of HE4 in women suffering from ovarian cancer.
In this study, 20 paraffin-embedded tissue samples from women with ovarian cancer and 10 normal samples were collected from Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran. After removing paraffin, RNA extraction was performed with RNAPlus solution. cDNA was synthesized through reverse transcription by MMULV enzyme. Gene expression was measured by Relative Real time PCR method. Glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase gene (GAPDH) was used as an internal control.
The HE4 was expressed in normal and cancerous tissues, though its expression was observed more in tumor tissues (4.083) than noncancerous tissues. The study results also revealed that the expression level of HE4 increased with the advancement of the disease.
According to the results, it can be concluded that HE4 expression levels greatly increases in tumor samples. Therefore, HE4 gene expression measurements can serve as a valuable prognostic factor for early detection and treatment management of the disease.