Stromal accumulation of hyaluronan in epithelial ovarian cancers is an independent predictor of tumor spreading and unfavorable outcome of the disease. We started to screen for chromosomal causes of this accumulation by studying deletions in 3p21.3, a region harboring 3 hyaluronidase genes (HYAL1-3) among other potentially important tumor suppressors. Using 6 microsatellite markers from this region, allelic imbalance was found in 60-87% of the informative tumor cells microdissected from histologic sections of 58 patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. However, adjacent stromal cells originally intended as controls showed allelic imbalance at a frequency almost as high as the tumor cells (52-80%). A further laser capture microdissection on 10 borderline tumors also showed a high rate of allelic imbalance, both in the epithelial and stromal cells, but with a pattern slightly different from cancers. Allelic imbalance in the tumor epithelium or stroma was not correlated with the accumulation of hyaluronan or clinicopathologic parameters, including tumor stage and grade. The results suggest that factors other than inactivation of the HYAL1-3 genes are responsible for hyaluronan accumulation in epithelial ovarian tumors. Moreover, the results indicate that the stromal cells of the epithelial ovarian cancers not only respond to the signals from malignant epithelium but also have themselves undergone genetic alterations in markers partly identical to those in the cancer epithelial cells and may actively contribute to the development of the tumor from its early stages to the late determinants of patient mortality.
Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.