ABSTRACT
Centrosome amplification, the presence of more than two centrosomes in a cell is a common feature of most human cancer cell lines. However, little is known about centrosome numbers of human cancers and whether amplification or other numerical aberrations are frequently present. To address this question, we have analyzed a large cohort of human epithelial ovarian cancers (EOCs) from 100 patients. Using state-of-the-art microscopy, we have determined the Centrosome-Nucleus Index (CNI) of each tumor. We found that EOCs show infrequent centrosome amplifications. Strikingly, the large majority of these tumors presented low CNIs. We show that low CNI tumors are enriched in the mesenchymal subgroup and correlate with poor patient survival. Our findings highlight a novel paradigm linking low centrosome number with highly aggressive behavior in ovarian cancers and show that the CNI signature may be used to stratify ovarian cancers.
Competing Interest Statement
T. Popova and M.-H. Stern are co-inventors of the LST method (US20170260588, US20150140122 and exclusive Licence to Myriad Genetics). The other authors declare no competing interests.
Footnotes
We have repeated the clearance assays and included this set of data and data related with Invasion assays. In addition we have also analyzed and compared the transcriptomic signatures typical of ovarian cancers in our cohort of HGSOCs.