open access - New perspectives on molecular targeted therapy in ovarian clear cell carcinoma

open access

There is now compelling evidence to suggest that epithelial ovarian cancers (EOCs) represent a heterogeneous group of tumours with distinct subtypes having different tissues of origin, molecular characteristics and outcome (Kurman and Shih, 2010). In Western populations, ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCCs) account for about 5–13% of all EOCs (Chan et al, 2008; McCluggage, 2008), whereas in Japan, its prevalence rises to 15–25% (Sugiyama et al, 2000; Itamochi et al, 2008) of all EOCs. It is currently unclear why OCCCs are more common in women of oriental descent, but, regardless of ethnicity, OCCCs have been shown to be associated with a poorer prognosis and are relatively resistant to conventional platinum-based chemotherapy when compared with other EOC subtypes (Tan and Kaye, 2007)......

"....These data suggest that OCCCs are genomically heterogeneous and that the pattern and complexity of genome-wide copy number aberrations are not only of taxonomic interest, but may also underpin the phenotypic differences in OCCCs with regard to clinical outcome. Indeed, it would appear that subgroups of OCCCs may harbour specific copy number changes that render them more chemoresistant than other OCCCs (Tan et al, 2011)......