Urinary levels of Bcl-2 are elevated in ovarian cancer

963 Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of gynecologic cancer death in women in the US. It is estimated that 23,000 new cases are diagnosed annually and that 14,000 women die annually from this disease. The lack of early symptoms and the absence of a reliable screening test result in over 70% of women being diagnosed after the disease has spread beyond the ovary so that the prognosis is poor (5-year survival is no better than 37%). Deregulation of apoptosis due to overexpression of anti-apoptotic proteins contributes to the malignant phenotype by supporting cancer cell growth and therapeutic resistance. Building on a previous pilot study to assess whether urinary levels of the anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 could be used to detect ovarian cancer, urine was collected from normal healthy volunteers (N=58), patients with benign gynecologic disease (N=122) and patients with ovarian cancer (N=115) and measured for Bcl-2 by ELISA (mean ng/ml ± S.E.). The average amount of Bcl-2 in the urine of cancer patients was > 2 ng/ml and up to 10X greater than healthy controls or patients with benign disease. Using logistic regression, the predicted odds of cancer (early or late) increased 26.9%, (p