Kelly Seto

Ph.D Candidate, Department of Molecular & Medical Genetics

Identification of Significant Biological Pathways in the Development of Familial Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common form of cancer in women in North America and one of the greatest risks for this cancer is family history of breast/ovarian cancer. Many of the familial ovarian cancer cases are due to mutations in high penetrance genes BRCA1 or BRCA2; however, it is likely that there are additional genetic alterations that may be responsible for the development ovarian cancer in these cancer patients. Therefore, the main goal of my project is to identify the genes that may confer an increase in susceptibility of ovarian cancer in individuals with a family history of breast/ovarian cancer.
To identify such genetic changes, cDNA expression microarrays were used to compare the expression profiles of ovarian tumour samples from patients with a strong family history background of breast/ovarian cancer and patients with a weak family history background. From this analysis, we have identified a list of genes are differentially expressed between our two subject groups. Genes of interested were selected and further genetic and biochemical studies are currently being performed to investigate the pathways that may be involved in the development/progression of familial ovarian cancer.