Decreased Expression of Proapoptotic Genes Caspase-8- and BCL2-Associated Agonist of Cell Death (BAD) in Ovarian Cancer

Background

Ovarian cancer as the most lethal gynecologic malignancy in women is poorly detected during early stages of carcinogenesis. Therefore, there is an emergent need to look for specific and sensitive biomarkers for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

Materials and Methods

In this study, we performed real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to evaluate the expression of six proapoptotic genes, CASP8, BAK, APAF1, BAX, BID, and BAD, which contain CpG islands in their promoter regions. Afterward, the significantly downregulated genes were investigated by HpaII-PCR and methylation-specific PCR (MSP) to determine the methylation status between tumoral and adjacent normal tissues.

Results

The real-time PCR results in 24 tumoral and 9 normal adjacent tissues showed decreased expression of CASP8 and BAD genes in tumoral relative to normal samples. Furthermore, the methylation analysis showed no significant methylation between tumoral and normal samples.

Conclusion

Taken together, this could be concluded that downregulation of CASP8 and BAD genes in ovarian cancer may be as important causes for ovarian cancer carcinogenesis via inducing resistance to apoptosis; however, the downregulations are not due to promoter hypermethylation.