Octreotide: an active agent in epithelial ovarian carcinoma?

Somatostatin is a naturally occurring small peptide that binds to five subtypes of cell-surface receptors, causing activation of secondary-messenger pathways via membraneassociated G proteins. Somatostatin analogues, such as octreotide, are useful for treatment of neuroendocrine tumours, but there are no reports of therapeutic activity for ovarian cancer, despite preclinical data that suggests that octreotide has antiproliferative activity in ovarian cancer cells and that somatostatin receptors are present in human ovarian-cancer samples. This case report discusses a patient with chemoresistant ovarian cancer who, after receiving four different schedules of chemotherapy and progressing through the last two, achieved a complete response while receiving octreotide in the absence of any cytotoxic chemotherapy.