Florian Heitz

PurposeEndometrioid ovarian carcinoma (ENOC) is the second most-common type of ovarian carcinoma, comprising 10%-20% of cases. Recently, the study of ENOC has benefitted from comparisons to endometrial carcinomas including defining ENOC wit…

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard…

Abstract ARID1A (BAF250a) is a component of the SWI/SNF chromatin modifying complex, plays an important tumour suppressor role, and is considered prognostic in several malignancies. However, in ovarian carcinomas there are contradictory rep…

PURPOSE: Cancer antigen 125 (CA125) is a glycoprotein expressed by epithelial cells of several normal tissue types and overexpressed by several epithelial cancers. Serum CA125 levels are mostly used as an aid in the diagnosis of ovarian can…

BackgroundRegulatory T (Treg) cells, a subset of CD4+ T lymphocytes, are mediators of immunosuppression in cancer, and, thus, variants in genes encoding Treg cell immune molecules could be associated with ovarian cancer.MethodsIn a populati…

ObjectiveClinical genetic testing is commercially available for rs61764370, an inherited variant residing in a KRAS 3' UTR microRNA binding site, based on suggested associations with increased ovarian and breast cancer risk as well as with …

Abstract Background: CA125 is elevated in 80% of ovarian cancer cases and has proven utility in assessing response to therapy and prognosis. Unfortunately, CA125 is elevated in a variety of benign conditions and only in 50% of early stage o…

Disruption in circadian gene expression, whether due to genetic variation or environmental factors (e.g., light at night, shiftwork), is associated with increased incidence of breast, prostate, gastrointestinal and hematologic cancers and g…

ObjectiveTo evaluate whether endometriosis-associated genetic variation affects risk of ovarian cancer.DesignPooled genetic analysis.SettingUniversity hospital.Patient(s)Genetic data from 46,176 participants (15,361 ovarian cancer cases and…

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 12 epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) susceptibility alleles. The pattern of association at these loci is consistent in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers who are at high risk of EOC. After…

PurposeType II ovarian cancer (OC) and endometrial cancer (EC) are generally diagnosed at an advanced stage, translating into a poor survival rate. There is increasing evidence that Müllerian duct cancers may exfoliate cells. We have establ…

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a heterogeneous cancer with both genetic and environmental risk factors. Variants influencing the risk of developing the less-common EOC subtypes have not been fully investigated. We performed a genome-wid…

A missense single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the immune modulatory gene IL1A has been associated with ovarian cancer risk (rs17561). Although the exact mechanism through which this SNP alters risk of ovarian cancer is not clearly unde…

Survival in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is influenced by the host immune response, yet the key genetic determinants of inflammation and immunity that affect prognosis are not known. The nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) transcription factor fam…

HNF1B is overexpressed in clear cell epithelial ovarian cancer, and we observed epigenetic silencing in serous epithelial ovarian cancer, leading us to hypothesize that variation in this gene differentially associates with epithelial ovaria…