Abstract
Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecological cancer and when diagnosed at advanced stages the five-year survival rate is typically less than 30%. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma up-regulated factor (PAUF) plays a crucial role in tumor progression, angiogenesis, and immune evasion in the pancreatic tumor microenvironment. The current study aimed to characterize the potential tumorigenic role of PAUF in serous ovarian cancer as high expression of the factor is correlated with poor prognosis in epithelial ovarian cancer. Extracellular treatment with recombinant PAUF activated intracellular signal pathways that subsequently led to enhanced proliferation, migration, and invasion in various serous ovarian adenocarcinoma cell lines. A PAUF-knockout OVCAR-5 cell line demonstrated an apparent reduction in tumor incidence and delayed tumor growth in mouse xenograft experiments. Furthermore, the administration of an anti-PAUF antibody exhibited a notable therapeutic efficacy in mice bearing the OVCAR-5 cell line-derived xenograft tumors. Taken together, our results suggest that PAUF plays a role in the progression of serous ovarian adenocarcinoma and may serve as a novel therapeutic target of the disease.