The majority of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer present with disseminated disease.
Most ovarian tumors arise from the epithelial surface of the ovary.
These are classified by their predominant pattern of histologic differentiation, with serous carcinomas being the most common and aggressive type. Little is known of the molecular mechanisms underlying the histogenesis and development of the disease. We have found that antibodies are present in sera of patients with serous ovarian carcinomas which recognize specific proteins expressed in serous carcinomas and not, or at dramatically lower levels, by normal ovarian surface epithelium. To identify ovarian tumor antigens, serum antibodies of a patient with serous ovarian carcinoma were used to immuno-screen a lZAP ovarian carcinoma cDNA expression library. Twenty-one of these clones encoded HOXA7, while another seven encoded HOXB7.