| Ovarian cancer (OC) is the leading cause of death from gynaecologic cancer. Because of a lack of early warning signs and vague symptomatology, most ovarian carcinoma patients present with widespread metastatic disease. At present, there is no effective screening tool for the general population and the biological mechanism of ovarian cancer is still unclear. So, there is no effective way to cure OC and the 5-year survival rate for patients with OC is still around 30%. Thus there is a critical need for a better understanding of the biology of the disease to find improved biological markers and therapies for ovarian carcinoma.As the largest subfamily of receptor protein tyrosine kinases (RTK), the Eph family is divided from others by combining their ligands ephrins. At present, the Eph family comprises 14 Eph receptors and 8 ephrin ligands.The study of the function of Eph family is mainly involved in the embryonic development, particularly in the progression of nervous system and blood vascular system. But recently more and more investigations have focused on the roles of Eph family in tumours and these investigations suggest that Eph family has potential role in the regulation of cell growth, survival, migration and angiopoiesis.As the first being founded receptor which has the function of tyrosine kinases,... |
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