Am. Codegoni et al., MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION OF A PANEL OF HUMAN OVARIAN-CARCINOMA XENOGRAFTS, European journal of cancer, 34(9), 1998, pp. 1432-1438
In a panel of 16 human ovarian tumours transplanted in nude mice, the
expression of genes involved in cell cycle regulation and in response
to drug treatment were characterised. In the 16 tumours analysed we co
uld not detect overexpression of Erb-B2 oncogene while expression of M
DR1 mRNA was not detected in 11/15 samples and was low in 4/15 tumours
. Only three tumours had mutations in the p53 gene exons 5-8 and one o
f these mutations did not result in any amino acid alteration. The lev
els of mRNA for cyclins A, D1 and E were heterogeneous with some tumou
rs expressing high levels and others not expressing them at all. The s
ame was found for the cyclin dependent kinases (CDK) CDK2 and CDK4 and
for CDK inhibitors P21/WAF1, p27/KIP1 and p16/CDKN2. Two genes belong
ing to the nucleotide excision repair, ERCC1 and ERCC3 were detectable
in all the samples examined, as were the genes MGMT and MAG, also inv
olved in DNA repair. The data indicate a heterogeneity in the expressi
on of genes considered to be involved in the cellular responses to cyt
otoxic drug treatment and indicate the possibility of using these tumo
ur models to test specifically molecules with a defined mechanism of a
ction. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.