Female genital tract tumors

Cancer of the female genital tract is the third most common group of malignancies in women, exceeded in frequency only by cancer of the breast and of the digestive tract. Most of the cancers are of the ovaries and uterus, but tumors also occur in the fallopian tubes, vulva, and vagina.

Genetic analysis of tumor cells has in recent decades shed considerable light on the mechanisms of tumorigenesis and is increasingly relied upon to provide prognostic and diagnostic information. Cancers of the female genital tract are among the least well characterized in this regard, however. Therefore the Section for Cancer Cytogenetics has an ongoing project aimed at characterizing these tumors.

During the four years of her PhD project, Francesca Micci, at the Section for Cancer Cytogenetics, adapted some of the newest FISH-based screening techniques, i.e., M-FISH, RxFISH, and CGH, to the analysis of different types of solid tumors making their cytogenetic characterization more precise and complete. Afterwards she has collected more than 400 samples from ovarian tumors and more than 100 samples from carcinomas of the endometrium, all of which have been short-term cultured and processed for cytogenetic analysis. The overall aim of the project is to apply systematic, multimodal cytogenetic analysis to tumors developing in the female genital tract, in order to determine which chromosomal abnormalities they have acquired during tumorigenesis. By multimodal cytogenetic analysis we mean a combination of genome-wide screening techniques such as G-banding, M-FISH, CGH, matrix-CGH, and expression array analysis that may be supplemented with chromosome- and locus-specific FISH to clarify the nature of all chromosomal markers in the complex karyotypes frequently observed in these carcinomas.