Morphological and molecular basis of ovarian serous carcinoma

Serous carcinoma is the most common type of epithelial ovarian cancer. In this review, we provide a com-prehensive picture of ovarian serous cancers from multiple aspects: the first part of this review summarizes the morphological, histological, and immunological signatures of ovarian serous carcinoma; subsequently, we review the history of the evolvement of different grading systems used in ovarian serous cancer; in the end, we focus on characterizing the genetics that underlie the 2-tiered pathways through which ovarian serous cancers are believed to arise: the low-grade and the high-grade pathways.