Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is a bioactive lipid crucial for the initiation and progression of ovarian cancer. Identification of LPA−induced biomarkers is necessary for predicting prognosis of ovarian cancer patients. Here we report periostin, an extracellular matrix protein, as an LPA−induced protein in stromal cells and as a prognostic marker in patients with epithelial ovarian cancer. In human epithelial ovarian cancer tissues, periostin was mainly expressed in cancer−associated stromal fibroblasts, but not in cancer cells. The expression levels of periostin highly correlated with poor survival and tumor recurrence of ovarian cancer patients. Treatment of human adipose tissue−derived stromal cells with LPA or conditioned media from human ovarian adenocarcinoma cell lines, such as SK−OV−3 and OVCAR−3, induced expression of periostin. The periostin expression induced by cancer−conditioned media was abrogated by silencing of the LPA receptor 1 expression using small hairpin RNA lentivirus. Recombinant periostin stimulated adhesion and invasion of SK−OV−3 human ovarian adenocarcinoma cells and induced expression of matrix metalloprotease−2 in the cancer cells. These results suggest that LPA is associated with the expression of periostin in cancer−associated fibroblasts of epithelial ovarian cancer. © 2010 UICC.

PMID: 20309942 [PubMed − as supplied by publisher] Source: National Library of Medicine.