Short communication

Activation of hedgehog signaling is not a frequent event in ovarian cancers

Ling Yang^1,2,3 , Jing He² , Shuhong Huang¹ , Xiaoli Zhang^2,3 , Yuehong Bian¹ , Nonggao He² , Hongwei Zhang¹ and Jingwu Xie^2,3

¹  Institute of Developmental Biology, School of Life Sciences, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, PR China

²  Sealy Center for Cancer Cell Biology, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas 77555-1048, USA

³  Wells Center for Pediatric Research, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Indiana University Simon Cancer Center, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana 46202, USA

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Molecular Cancer 2009, 8:112doi:10.1186/1476-4598-8-112

Published:	27 November 2009

Abstract

The hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway regulates many processes of development and tissue homeostasis. Activation of hedgehog signaling has been reported in about 30% of human cancer including ovarian cancer. Inhibition of hedgehog signaling has been pursued as an effective strategy for cancer treatment including an ongoing phase II clinical trial in ovarian cancer. However, the rate of hedgehog signaling activation in ovarian cancer was reported differently by different groups. To predict the successful for future clinical trials of hedgehog signaling inhibitors in ovarian cancer, we assessed hedgehog pathway activation in 34 ovarian epithelial tumor specimens through analyses of target gene expression by in-situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, RT-PCR and real-time PCR. In contrast to previous reports, we only detected a small proportion of ovarian cancers with hedgehog target gene expression, suggesting that identification of the tumors with activated hedgehog signaling activation will facilitate chemotherapy with hedgehog signaling inhibitors.