Abstract
Detailed flow cytometric analysis of cellular DNA content was performed on neoplastic tissue from 33 patients with malignant common epithelial ovarian tumours in order to investigate the intratumoral stability of ploidy and proliferative fraction. There was a remarkable stability, both spatial and temporal, in the DNA pattern for any particular tumour. Of 24 tumours that were analysed in multiple areas tumour ploidy was found to be a stable marker in all but 3 cases where regional variations were evident. In 9 patients serial analyses were performed on tumour obtained either at initial diagnosis (6 patients) or second look laparotomy (3 patients) and then some time later (7-17 months) at relapse or death and in all cases the tumour ploidy remained unchanged. In addition, 10 ovarian carcinomas established in nude mice have maintained a DNA content during serial passage similar to that of the original implanted tumour. In contrast in 50% of tumours that were evaluable for S-phase analysis we demonstrated a considerable intratumoral variability in the S-phase fraction. We conclude that cellular DNA content is a stable feature of ovarian carcinoma while S-phase fraction is commonly subject to intratumoral variation.
Highlights
Detailed flow cytometric analysis of cellular DNA content was performed on neoplastic tissue from 33 patients with malignant common epithelial ovarian tumours in order to investigate the intratumoral stability of ploidy and proliferative fraction
The flow cytometric determination of cellular DNA content has been shown to be of prognostic value in a number of tumour types (Bunn et al, 1982; Wolley et al, 1982) and we have recently reported that tumour ploidy was an independent prognostic variable and the major determinant of survival in patients with advanced ovarian cancer (Friedlander et al, 1983a)
Flow cytometric analysis allows tumour DNA content and proliferative activity to be determined rapidly and precisely and their value as possible objective parameters reflecting tumour biology is of intense interest
Summary
Detailed flow cytometric analysis of cellular DNA content was performed on neoplastic tissue from 33 patients with malignant common epithelial ovarian tumours in order to investigate the intratumoral stability of ploidy and proliferative fraction. We conclude that cellular DNA content is a stable feature of ovarian carcinoma while S-phase fraction is commonly subject to intratumoral variation. The value of a single estimation of tumour ploidy would be clearly limited if tumours commonly exhibited a variation in ploidy within different regions of the primary tumour or its metastases Such variability has been reported in colonic cancer (Petersen et al, 1981) and small cell lung cancer (Vindelov et al, 1980) but there are no studies that have addressed the stability of cellular DNA content as determined with flow cytometry in ovarian tumours. We report the results of a study investigating the frequency of intratumoral heterogeneity of cellular DNA content and proliferative fraction (S-phase) in ovarian carcinomas
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