This study investigates the mechanism of fibronectin (FN) in stimulating ovarian cancer cell migration and invasion through up-regulation of focal adhesion kinase (FAK) pathway.
MMP-2 enhanced peritoneal adhesion of OvCa cells through cleavage of ECM proteins fibronectin (FN) and vitronectin (Vn) into small fragments and increased binding of OvCa cells to these FN and Vn fragments and their receptors, alpha5beta1 and alphaVbeta3 integrin.
The authors made an attempt to predict recurrence of ovarian cancer by comparing the clinico-pathologic characteristics, grading and biological behavior of the ovarian malignancies with the matrix metalloproteases activities and fibronectin expression.
Our results suggest that THY1 is a putative tumor suppressor gene for ovarian cancer and that THBS1, SPARC, and FN1 are genes associated with the regulation of in vivo tumor growth rate.