Prediction, Prevention, Prognostic and Personalized Therapy of Ovarian Cancer- Biomarkers and Precision Medicine

Author(s): Xiaohong Huang, Jing Lu, Yifei Zhang, Jian Qiu, Guorong Yao, Pengtao Song, and Biaoru Li.

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common causes of death in women. Ovarian cancer is often diagnosed at an advanced stage, with survival rates dependent on the stage of the disease, while early stages are mostly asymptomatic. Early detection of this disease is one of the most important steps to promote a good prognosis for patients and an excellent response to drug treatment because genomic instability is one of the hallmarks of ovarian cancer. In an advanced stage, individual patients are treated with drugs that help control their growth, division, and spread. A new generation of technologies and biomarkers with targeted therapy are emerging rapidly, including microRNA, picoRNA, non-coding RNA and their tumor-intrinsic signaling pathways, angiogenesis, hormone receptors, and immune factors. Early detection is now possible thanks to some effective screening strategies. The ovarian cancer is divided into different clinical subtypes, and there is still a wide range of genetic and progressive diversity in each subtype. Once ovarian cancer is often diagnosed at an advanced stage with different clinical subtypes, a new generation of treatments, such as targeted therapy, will become possible. Now, based on emerging biomarkers consisting of the DNA level (SNPs and epigenetics), RNA level (mRNA, microRNA, picoRNA, non-coding RNA), and protein level, it is time to evaluate the early status and progression with the biomarkers related to an efficacy of the prevention and drug treatment for this type of disease.