The marker profile of 18 samples of normal human ovarian tissues and 138 samples of their derived
tumors was established using 51
monoclonal antibodies directed against intermediate filaments, ovarian
carcinoma-specific
antigens, general
tumor-associated
antigens and MHC-I/II
antigens. Our data show that
vimentin and
keratins 7, 8, 18, and 19 were found in both epithelial and some nonepithelial ovarian
tumors. Several
tumor samples contained additional
keratins 4, 10, 13, and 14, as well as
desmin. BW 495/36 and to a lesser extent HMFG-2 were usually found in all ovarian
tumors that contained simple epithelial
keratins, except the absence of HMFG-2 in gonadal
tumors as well as in
dysgerminomas. In contrast to the
keratin antibodies, these two panepithelial
antibodies were negative in normal mesothelial cells and granulosa cells of the ovarian follicles. In general, the marker
TAG-72 appeared useful for its discrimination between positively stained mucinous
adenomas, the ovarian
carcinomas as well as
germ cell tumors, and the negatively stained gonadal
tumors, serous
adenomas, and cystomas. OV632 appeared useful in the distinction between negatively stained serous
adenomas and positively stained serous
carcinomas. In contrast, the
monoclonal antibodies OC 125, OV-TL 3, OV-TL 16, and MOv 18 can be considered as pan-ovarian
carcinoma markers, however without the discriminative capability as seen for OV632. These ovarian
carcinoma-associated
antigens were hardly found expressed in gonadal and
germ cell tumors, except in the group of
endodermal sinus tumors. HLA-I was found to be expressed in almost all nucleated cells, although loss of HLA-I expression was seen in areas of
tumor cells.
HLA-DR was negative in normal ovarian tissue, but heterogeneous expression was noticed in most of the epithelial
tumors.