In the present study, we firstly isolated CAFs from tumour tissues of the patients with ovarian cancer and demonstrated that the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) was highly expressed in the supernatants of CAFs.
HGF, the only known ligand for cMET, is found at high levels in both serum and ascites in women with ovarian cancer, and is proposed to induce both migration and metastasis.
Altogether, these data show that the HSP27 is required for the proinvasive and prometastatic activity of HGF and suggest that HSP27 might be not only a marker of progression of ovarian cancer, but also a suitable target for therapy.
In the present study, we evaluated the role of the HGF signaling pathway in OVCA cell line chemoresistance and OVCA patient overall survival as well as the influence of HGF/c-Met signaling inhibition on the sensitivity of OVCA cells to combinational carboplatin plus paclitaxel therapy.
We used an experimental in vitro model of human ovarian surface epithelium (OSE), the tissue of origin of >90% of ovarian cancers, to more precisely define the contribution of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) to various OSE phenotypes at different stages of neoplastic progression.
Peritoneal dissemination is critical for the progression of ovarian cancer and our study revealed that HGF induces migration and invasion of ovarian cancer cells.