Gene Expression in Normal and Tumor Ovarian Epithelial Cells from Non-carriers and Heterozygous Carriers of a BRCA French Canadian Mutation

We hypothesized that the transcriptome of primary cultures of morphologically normal ovarian surface epithelial cells could be altered by the presence of a heterozygous BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. We aimed to discover early events associated to ovarian carcinogenesis, which could represent putative targets for preventive strategies of this silent killer tumor. We identified the first molecular signature associated with French Canadian BRCA1 or BRCA2 founder mutations in morphologically normal ovarian epithelial cells. We discovered that wild-type and mutated BRCA2 allelic transcripts were expressed not only in morphologically normal but also in tumor cells from 8765delAG BRCA2 carriers. Further analysis of morphologically normal ovarian and tumor cells from C4446T BRCA1 carriers lead to the same observation. Our data support the idea that one single hit in BRCA1 or BRCA2 is sufficient to alter the transcriptome of phenotypically normal ovarian epithelial cell. The highest level of BRCA2 mutated allele transcript expression was measured in cells originating from the most aggressive ovarian tumor. The penetrance of the mutation and the aggressiveness of the related tumor could depend on a dosage effect of the mutated allele transcript. We studied the molecular profiles associated with 5 a priori classes of samples : 4 non-familial morphologically normal ovarian surface epithelium (NOSEs) : NM class, 2 BRCA1-mutated NOSEs : M1 class, 3 BRCA2-mutated NOSEs : M2 class, 3 BRCA1-mutated ovarian tumor cells (TOVs) : TM1 class and one BRCA2-mutated TOV :TM2 class. No technical replicates were included in this study. The following contrasts were computed : NM vs. M1, NM vs. M2, M1 vs. M2, M1 vs. TM1 and M (M1 union M2) vs. TM (TM1 union TM2).