Fig. 5. Serum markers and tumour burden score change during patient treatment.

a Patient tumour burden score at the start of treatment (calculated as described in Supplementary Table 2) was significantly greater in the neo-adjuvant and palliative ovarian cancer patient cohorts, compared to the adjuvant patient cohort. b, c Changes in tumour burden score (b) and levels of sFRα (c) were measured across treatment timepoints for all ovarian cancer patient cohorts. d (Left) Comparison of changes in serum sFRα and tumour burden score over time in patients receiving standard neo-adjuvant treatment regimen. (Right) Beta coefficients illustrate the variation in sFRα among the different time points, namely timepoints 1 and 2, timepoints 1 and 3, and overall across the earliest and latest timepoint for which data were collected. N numbers and treatment timepoints as indicated in Fig. 1. e Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis evaluating the capacity sFRα to predict high values of tumour burden scores in the neo-adjuvant treatment-naive patient group. sFRα levels were predictive of high tumour burden scores (high defined as the upper quartile: ≥75th percentile of tumour burden scores). *P ≤ 0.05, **P ≤ 0.01, ****P ≤ 0.0001. Statistical tests: t test, one-way ANOVA with Kruskal–Wallis multiple comparisons, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analyses and linear regression analysis. Error bars represent the standard error of mean (SEM).