Recent advances in the biomarkers for epithelial ovarian cancer

in the study. Owing to the study design, there may be a possibility of quality problems in the preserved serum. The sample distribution was limited and different from those of other investigations. The cut-off of HE4 is not determined and varies among comparable reports. Indeed, the history of HE4 is relatively short and HE4 is subject to clinical validation. Therefore, both HE4 and CA-125 should be included in more prospective studies in the future. In another paper in this issue, Kang et al. [12] dealt with the utilization of CA-125 as a predictive marker for recurrence. They collected data from two high-volume institutions and scrutinized the correlation between post-treatment nadir CA- 125 and progression free survival in patients with advanced ovarian cancer who had achieved complete remission. An acknowledgeable finding of this paper is the determination of a reasonable cut-off value of CA-125 that can be used for the identification of high-risk patients. Although there were some

including sample size and population, the validat - ed cut-off value of CA-125 may be used reliably to stratify the post-treatment patients or to plan a novel consolidation treat- ment for the better outcome of the poor prognostic group. In the future, we expect other biomarkers including HE4 could be used for monitoring the response to therapy and the course of the disease as CA-125. Further studies should be performed to provide evidence not only on the diagnostic value of tumor biomarkers but also their potential prognostic or predictive value for the management of EOC patients. CONFLICT OF INTEREST No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

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