Safety and efficacy of fertility-sparing surgery for an orthotopic xenograft model of epithelial ovarian cancer in nude mice

Objective: To analyze the safety of, and factors influencing, fertility-sparing surgery in nude a mouse model bearing an orthotopic xenograft of human epithelial ovarian cancer. Materials and Methods: Eight weeks post-xenograft transplantation, mice were split into five cohorts for different fertility-sparing surgeries to remove their tumours. All cohorts were observed for three months to analyse the effectiveness of the different surgical methods in terms of impact on occult cancer detection in the remaining ovarian tissues, and the effect of invasion types on the recurrence rate of ovarian tumor. Results: No obvious difference was found in the recurrence rate in groups subject to unilateral adnexectomy or ovarian-sparing local mass excision, when compared to the hysterectomy-bilateral adnexectomy group. The recurrence rate of tumors with pseudocapsule penetration and/or tumor dissection was higher than that with other invasion types and other surgery. The frequency of occult cancer detection in cancers displaying pseudocapsule and pseudocapsule invasion was significantly higher in those with tumor dissection when compared to those with ovarian-sparing local mass excision. Conclusions: Fertility-sparing surgery is not a factor influencing the prognosis of bilateral epithelial ovarian cancer. However, the invasion type of ovarian tumor exhibits an important role in fertility-sparing surgery; with tumors with pseudocapsule or pseudocapsule invasion being suitable for surgery, whereas tumors appearing with pseudocapsule penetration should be not be considered for this surgery. Ovarian-sparing local mass excision as a fertility-sparing surgery is safe and feasible for epithelial ovarian cancer at the experimental level, and now demands further pre-clinical validation in multi-center trials.

Epithelial ovarian cancer; Fertility-sparing surgery; Neoplasm invasion type; Ovarian-sparing local mass excision

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