Mayo Clinic Laboratory and Pathology Research Roundup: April 9

The Research Roundup provides an overview of the past week’s research from Mayo Medical Laboratories consultants, including featured abstracts and complete list of published studies and reviews.


Featured Abstract

Genetic Evidence for Early Peritoneal Spreading in Pelvic High-Grade Serous Cancer

Most pelvic high-grade serous (HGS) carcinomas have been proposed to arise from tubal primaries that progress rapidly to advanced disease. However, the temporal sequence of ovarian and peritoneal metastases is not well characterized. Mayo Clinic researchers conducted a study to establish the sequence of metastases, phylogenetic relationships among the ovarian and peritoneal carcinomas were determined from single-nucleotide variations (SNVs) in nine tumor regions from each patient with pelvic HGS carcinomas. Somatic SNVs from each tumor sample were used to reconstruct phylogenies of samples from each patient. Variant allele frequencies were used to reconstruct subclone phylogenies in each tumor sample. The genetic evidence that peritoneal implants arose before or concurrently with ovarian implants is consistent with the emerging concept of the extra-ovarian origin of pelvic HGS cancer. The results challenge the concept of stepwise spatial progression from the fallopian primary to ovarian carcinomas to peritoneal dissemination and suggest an alternative progression model where peritoneal spreading of early clones occurs before or in parallel with ovarian metastases. The study was published in Frontiers in Oncology.


Published to PubMed This Week

Kelley Luedke

Kelley Luedke is a Marketing Channel Manager at Mayo Clinic Laboratories. She is the principle editor and writer of Insights and leads social media and direct marketing strategy. Kelley has worked at Mayo Clinic since 2013. Outside of work, you can find Kelley running, traveling, playing with her kitty, and exploring new foods.