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conferenceseries.com
Volume 9, Issue 9 (Suppl) J Cancer Sci Ther, an open access journal
ISSN: 1948-5956 World Cancer 2017
October 19-21, 2017
25th WORLD CANCER CONFERENCE
October 19-21, 2017 | Rome, Italy
A specific neuronal calcium sensor protein as potential predictive biomarker for ovarian cancer
therapy
Sarah Konrad1,2, Kristina Schwamborn 3, Daniela Hellmann2, Achim Krüger4, Alfons Meindl2 and Juliane Ramser2
1German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), Germany
2Clinic of Gynecology and Obstetrics, TU München, Germany
3Institute of Pathology, TU München, Germany
4Institute of Molecular Immunology & Experimental Oncology, Germany
S poradic ovarian cancer has the highest relative mortality among gynecological cancers as approximately 75% of patients are
diagnosed at an advanced stage, resulting in poor overall survival. To improve patient’s outcome targeted therapy strategies
are required urgently. In search of new biomarkers for personalized therapies, we recently identified a gene encoding a specific
neuronal calcium sensor (NCS). The NCS-family is known to be involved in calcium-signaling on membranes and functions
as a calcium dependent molecular switch. We demonstrated that its expression, analyzed on mRNA as well as on protein level,
was significantly associated with patient survival. Moreover, the putative biomarker persisted also as a significant factor for
OS (p=0.008) and RFS (p=0.014) in multivariable analyses. As little is known about the involvement of the protein in cancer,
we established stable knock-downs in ovarian cancer cell lines to explore the effect of its expression on cancer cell viability
and migration. Most strikingly, the knock-down cells reacted significantly less sensitive to cisplatin treatment as compared
to the control cells. This effect was further investigated using different cisplatin concentrations and treatment durations. The
differences were reproducible and remained significant. Since platinum-based therapy represents the “gold-standard” in
ovarian cancer treatment, we postulate a predictive potential of our candidate to select patients that most probably benefit
from platinum-based treatment from patients which will likely not have a benefit.
Biography
Sarah Konrad has completed her MSc in Chemistry from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2014. She is now a PhD student of the German Cancer
Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) and is conducting her PhD in the Department of Gynecological Tumor Genetics (Prof. Alfons Meindl
/ Dr. Juliane Ramser) at the Technische Universität München (TUM). Her project focuses on identifying and functionally characterizing new prognostic and therapy-
relevant biomarkers for personalized ovarian cancer therapy.
Sarah Konrad et al., J Cancer Sci Ther 2017, 9:9(Suppl)
DOI: 10.4172/1948-5956-C1-112