Fahimeh Ezzatizadeh - Department of molcular and cellular sciences , Faculty of advanced sciences & Technology, Pharmaceutical Sciences Branch, Islamic Azad university, Tehran‐Iran
Soyar Sari - Department of molcular and cellular sciences , Faculty of advanced sciences & Technology,Pharmaceutical Sciences Branch, Islamic Azad university, Tehran‐Iran
Ardeshir Hesampour - Department of Biology, Tehran Central Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

Background and aims: Ovarian epithelial malignancy is one of the most prevalent and crucial causes of cancer death in women. Recent studies emphasize the critical role of several noncoding RNAs (including microRNAs) in modulating disease severity and early detection of different cancer types. In this regards, it has been demonstrated that microRNA-196a-2 (miR-196a-2) plays an important role in tumorigenesis of many cancer types. However, the impact of miR-196a-2 on generation and progression of ovarian epithelial cancer is yet unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate relationship of ovarian epithelial cancer and miR-196a-2.Materials and methods: In this study, expression level of miR-196a-2 was evaluated in ovarian epithelial tissue obtained from 50 patients, in comparison with similar quantity of normal individuals. Upon extraction of total RNA from frozen tissue samples, cDNA was generated. By designing specific primers, expression level of miR-196a-2 was relatively assessed using qRT-PCR. In this experiment, GAPDH was utilized as housekeeping gene.Results: We determined that miR-196a-2 was significantly up-regulated in ovarian cancer, compared to normal tissue. Further investigations revealed that this overexpression is elevated by increasing the malignancy stage.Conclusion: Our findings indicate the crucial role of miR-196a-2 in progression of ovarian epithelial cancer, suggesting the inhibitory effect of this microRNA on tumor suppressor genes. In future, further investigations are required to validate current data and navigate mechanism underlying this procedure. This could potentially lead us to find a tumor marker in early diagnosis of ovarian epithelial cancer.

Ovarian epithelial cancer, miR-196a-2, Tumor marker, qRT-PCR