Developing Clinically Relevant Models of Mucinous Ovarian Carcinoma for Testing Therapies
Abstract
Mucinous ovarian cancer (MOC) is a rare type of ovarian cancer that is quite different to the other subtypes. Most women who get this disease at an advanced stage will die within 2 years because the standard ovarian drugs do not work, and doctors don’t have good evidence to help them choose other therapies. One of the ways we could help is to study tumors removed from women during their surgery, by growing them in the laboratory and then testing various drugs on them to see which ones will work. This strategy is one that has been successful for other tumor types. The problem with MOC is that when we try to grow the tumor in the laboratory, or put small pieces of tumor into mice and allow the mice to develop cancer, it doesn’t work very often. We think this is because the conditions used are those that, while they work well for other ovarian cancers, they don’t work for MOC since it is so different. We think that we need to figure out conditions specifically for MOC, so that we will have better success in the laboratory experiments. Once we have the right set of conditions, we will be able to grow any MOC in the laboratory and then we can test a wide variety of drugs on them – including drugs that are already in the clinic for other tumors, drugs that are in clinical trials, and entirely novel therapies. These tests will provide important information to doctors so that they can be confident in selecting effective drugs to give to their MOC patients. Ultimately, this process could occur in “real time,” that is, using the cells from a patient to test therapies and then provide individualized treatment options back to the clinician in time to be used for the patient. In addition, we will be able to use the data from the models to persuade clinical trial leaders that they should include MOC in their drug trials. One of the goals of the Ovarian Cancer Research Program is to treat and cure ovarian cancer by funding patient-centered research. We think our study is very pertinent to this goal: we will produce models that have come straight from patients and use them for testing drugs. We will provide evidence that is directly relevant for patient treatment and will lead to improving the survival of women with mucinous ovarian cancer. Such an outcome will benefit the health of any woman in the military Service, or any woman who is a family member of someone in the Service, who is diagnosed with MOC. Since MOC is often found in women under the age of 50, diagnoses are likely to occur in active Service members. Improving their survival outcomes will have long-term and far-reaching effects for them and their families.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Oct 29, 2018
- Source ID
- W81XWH1810226
Entities
People
- Kylie Gorringe
Organizations
- United States Army