Ovarian adenocarcinomas express members of different cytokine pathways - analysis and quantification of transcripts from the tgf-alpha and m-csf fms pathways and the transcription factor cjun.

The expressions of two mitogenic signals, M-CSF/FMS and TGFalpha/EGF-R together with the amounts of JUN mRNA were analyzed and quantified from freshly frozen specimens of 71 primary ovarian cancers, 5 other malignant ovarian tumors, 6 myometria, 4 normal ovaries and 4 placentae. JUN was analyzed by RNAase protection assay. The percentages of tumor specimens with high amounts of specific RNA were: 11% FMS, 21% M-CSF, 23% TGFalpha and 21% JUN. Whereas 34% of tumors were TGFalpha negative, only a few cases had no detectable FMS or M-CSF signals. The comparison of the quantified RNA results achieved positive correlations between FMS and M-CSF, TGFalpha and JUN, respectively. No correlation was found between the TGFalpha and M-CSF/FMS signals neither between the M-CSF/FMS and JUN signals. The M-CSF/FMS signals were also found in the non-malignant specimens. The tumor cells of ovarian cancers are endowed to express and to produce a panel of different growth factors and cytokines and their composition could be responsible for some individual properties of tumors.