Identification of Autophagy Status in Diagnosed Epithelial Ovarian Tumor/Cancer Cases

Abstract

Background:  Physiological autophagy is a conserved process in which lysosomal degradation of damaged organelles and proteins occurs for its reutilization. During autophagy, decrease in cell size leads to a change in organ size. Deranged autophagy is observed in many neoplastic growths. However, few studies have been conducted for the examination of relationship between autophagy and Epithelial Ovarian Neoplasia (Tumor/Cancers), so this study investigated the expression of autophagy in Epithelial Ovarian Neoplasia (Tumor/Cancers) and its correlation with the age, stage and grade of the patient.

Objectives: 

Methods: In this study, LC-3 marker for the detection of autophagy was analyzed by immunohistochemistry on formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue sections. Total of 74 patient’s specimens of previously diagnosed Epithelial Ovarian Tumor/Cancer were taken into consideration. The correlation between autophagy and patient’s age, grade and stage were determined by using Chi square test

Results:  The findings resulting from this study showed that Adenoma is more prevalent in younger age group (14-34 years) while adenocarcinoma in older age group (54-74 years). 77.5% of adenoma and 82.5 % adenocarcinoma cases were detected with positive LC 3 autophagy marker confirming that autophagy expression is elevated.

Conclusion: From the results of this study, it is concluded that the process of Autophagy is enhanced in Epithelial Ovarian Tumor/Cancer and can be a viable target for the treatment of it in particular and other cancers in general. Future studies done to target different steps of autophagy are expected to clarify the role of this phenomenon in the biology of Epithelial Ovarian Neoplasia. Methods like FACS analysis, single cell sequencing, Microarray of different tumors and further elucidate the significance of this phenomenon in organ neoplasia.