Egidio Iorio1, Alessandro Ricci1, Maria Elena Pisanu1, Luisa Paris1, Massimo Di Vito1, Paola Alberti2, Delia Mezzanzanica2, Giancarlo Castellano2, Marina Bagnoli2, Loris de Cecco2, Kristine Glunde3, Zaver Bhujwalla3, Silvana Canevari2, Franca Podo1
1Istituto Superiore di Sanit, Roma, Italy; 2Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milano, Italy; 3Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
Elucidation of the mechanisms responsible for the aberrant phosphatidylcholine (PC) metabolism in ephitelial ovarian cancer (EOC) cells may allow identification of novel biomarkers of tumor progression and design of new targeted therapies. In this study we investigated activities and genomic expression of enzymes responsible for PCho accumulation in EOC cells compared with non tumoral immortalized cell variants. The results showed that major contributions to PCho accumulation in EOC cells likely derive from upregulation of chok (about 10x), increase in overall chok activity (about 20x), as well in a up to 17-fold activation of PC-specific phospholipase C.