Newly discovered biomarkers for ovarian cancer could lead to new diagnostic tests for detection and better treatment, researchers suggest.

Hard to diagnose and difficult to treat, ovarian cancer is an especially serious, often fatal form of cancer — which has spurred research to improve the chances of survival for sufferers.

A significant challenge is that ovarian cancer usually doesn't present any symptoms until it is already well established.

Now, scientists at the University of California, San Diego say they've identified six examples of genetic material known as mRNA isoforms that are produced by cancer cells, and are not produced by normal cells.

The finding, described in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, opens up the possibility that the genetic biomarkers could be used as a tool for early diagnoses of ovarian cancer.

"We were inspired by many studies aimed at using DNA to detect cancer," said lead author Christian Barrett, a bioinformatics expert with the Institute for Genomic Medicine in the UCSD School of Medicine. "But we wondered if we could instead develop an ovarian cancer detection test based on tumor-specific mRNA that has disseminated from cancer cells to the cervix and can be collected during a routine Pap test."

The researchers developed a bioinformatics algorithm they used to screen public genetic databases from the National Institutes of Health.

The analysis yielded six mRNA isoforms reliably present in 296 ovarian cancer samples but not present in 1,839 samples of normal tissue.

Not only are the isoforms specific enough to ovarian cancer as to suggest a test for early detection, some proteins in the mRNA codes could be potential new targets for treatments, the researchers explained.

As an experiment to validate their database findings, the scientists looked for the same mRNA biomarkers in ovarian cancer cells grown in their laboratory — and found them.

The findings suggest avenues for further study, according to study co-author Cheryl C. Saenz.

"Clinical trials will need to be conducted on women to confirm the presence of these markers in women that we know have cancer, as well as to document the absence of the markers in women that do not have ovarian cancer," she said.