Resumen
High-grade serous carcinoma (HGSOC) is the most aggressive subtype of ovarian cancer and accounts for the vast majority of advanced stage cases. Intracellular accumulation of lipids as lipid droplets has been recognized as one of the characteristics of cancers and implicated in poor prognosis of several cancers, such as human melanomas. Here, we investigated the relationship between prognosis and lipid accumulation in HGSOC, and found that enhanced lipid accumulation in HGSOC tissues significantly correlated with poor prognosis. In cell-based assays with human ovarian cancer cells, we provide evidence that aerobic glycolysis, which is one of the characteristic metabolic abnormalities in cancer, induced lipid accumulation within cancer cells and targeting the lipid accumulation could suppress cancer cell proliferation. Thus, our results propose abnormal lipid accumulation as a negative indicator of HGSOC prognosis and a novel therapeutic target.