To determine the appropriate treatment approach for metastatic cancer, it is critical to identify a tumor’s primary site of origin. Specific biomarkers to assist with proper diagnosis could benefit clinicians and patients.
PAX8 is commonly used to determine if a tumor is of gynecologic origin, but it also is highly expressed in other cancers such as thyroid and renal carcinomas, making it difficult to reliably diagnose tumors with ovarian and endometrial origin. To identify a more specific biomarker, researchers led by Jinsong Liu, M.D., Ph.D., and Qingqing Ding, M.D., Ph.D., mined mRNA expression profile data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and performed immunological staining in a large cohort of ovarian and endometrial cancer along with samples from other cancer types.
They found SOX17 was highly expressed in different subtypes of ovarian and endometrial carcinomas but was not expressed in thyroid or renal carcinomas. In addition, SOX17 is not expressed in peritoneal mesothelioma and breast cancer, whose tumors often are confused with ovarian cancer. The data suggest SOX17 represents a sensitive and specific marker for identifying tumors of gynecological origin.