الفهرس 
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Abstract
OVARIAN CANCER kills more women in North America than all other gynecological malignancies combined. The high fatality-to-case ratio associated with ovarian cancer is partially caused by the lack of a recognizable pattern of symptoms in its early stages; 70% of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed with advanced stage disease. This disease has a 5-year survival rate of 85% if diagnosed early (stage I or II carcinoma), but survival decreases to less than 20% in women presenting with stage III or IV disease. Clearly, the development of new methods for early ovarian cancer diagnosis will likely contribute to improved patient outcomes.
The only well-validated ovarian cancer tumor marker, CA-125, was discovered about 20 years ago. CA-125 has clinical value for disease monitoring, and it is used as an aid for the early detection of relapse and for assessing response to treatment. CA-125 also has some prognostic value and can aid in disease diagnosis. More recently, the diagnostic value of CA-125 was shown to be improved by combination of markers, including CA-125 plus d-dimer or CA-125 plus OVX1, LASA, CA 15–3, CA 72–4, and prostasin. The application of CA-125 for screening asymptomatic individuals has been reported, but its value is still under investigation.
The sequencing of the human genome has raised hopes that new cancer biomarkers may soon be discovered. By using whole-genome mining approaches, investigators have identified many candidate biomarkers for ovarian cancer diagnosis and prognosis. It is now believed that the discovery of new biomarkers may ultimately lead to cancer-specific panels, which, when used with artificial network approaches, may bring about high specificity and sensitivity for cancer classification, diagnosis, and prognosis.
The human kallikrein gene family consists of 15 genes, all tandemly localized on chromosome 19q13.4. All genes encode for secreted serine proteases of relatively low molecular mass (approximately 30 kd). Among these kallikreins, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is the best cancer marker. In addition, human glandular kallikrein 2 (hK2) is an emerging prostate cancer marker. Recently, we reported preliminarily that human kallikrein 6 (hK6) is a potential serological marker for ovarian carcinoma. Indeed, many kallikreins seem to be disregulated in ovarian cancer, and their transcript levels seem to have either favorable or unfavorable prognostic value. This article examines in detail the diagnostic and prognostic value of serum hK6 levels in ovarian carcinoma