Ovarian Cancer Biomarkers and Therapeutic Targets

Survival rates for advanced stage ovarian cancer have not changed significantly in the past 40 years, and ovarian cancer remains the most lethal gynecologic cancer in women. Our goal is to change the status quo by developing new paradigms in the laboratory and efficiently translating them into the clinic. The most common type of ovarian cancer, and the one that accounts for the majority of deaths, is serous papillary carcinoma. Approximately 20 percent of patients with this ovarian cancer subtype are intrinsically resistant to chemotherapy or develop chemoresistant disease within one year from initial treatment. A reliable method to identify these poor prognosis patients would facilitate their inclusion into clinical trials or personalized treatment strategies at an earlier point. The lack of reliable biomarkers and curative treatment strategies for ovarian cancer inspired our work, which is aimed at identifying biomarkers for early detection, prognostication, and personalization of therapy.