Description
The source of IFN- in ovarian cancer microenvironment and its biological effect to the tumor cells is unclear. The immortalized human ovarian surface epithelial cell line, HOSE-E7/hTERT (HOSE) was treated with IFN- and expression microarray analysis was performed, and probes showing significantly higher values in IFN--added group were termed IFN- signature genes (295 probes). We then applied this signature to our ovarian cancer microarray data, which included 75 ovarian cancer clinical samples, by means of ss-GSEA. IFN- signature score was strongly correlated to the number of infiltrating CD4-positive or CD8-positive lymphocytes in the tumors. These data suggest that the IFN- in the ovarian cancer microenvironment is derived from lymphocytes, and an IFN--rich microenvironment is strongly correlated to a lymphocyte-rich microenvironment.