Mapping the Spatial Proteomic Landscape of Ovarian Tumors

Project summary

High-grade serous ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic malignancy associated with a disproportionately large number of deaths. Most women are diagnosed with high stage by which time tumors consist of complex mixtures of different cell types making curative treatment challenging. Standard of care is surgical debulking followed by platinum-based chemotherapy. Unfortunately, for most patients the disease recurs within 5 years with a tumor that is resistant to platinum. The goals of this proposal are to determine which cell types have a key role in ovarian tumor growth and progression and which cell types will be killed or survive chemotherapy. To accomplish our goals, we will use a new microscope-based technology called CODEX (CODetection by indEXing) combined with sophisticated computational tools that allow us to study the biology of high-grade serous ovarian tumors in unprecedented detail by imaging these tumors and characterizing the individual cells that make-up each individual tumor. This permits not only the detailed characterization of hundreds of thousands of single cells but also their location to neighboring cells within the tumor section. An important part of the design of this proposal is to image ovarian tumors where the response to chemotherapy is known. We predict that CODEX will allow us to link the occurrence of certain cell types within ovarian tumors with response to chemotherapy and thus have predictive significance.

This grant was made possible in part by a generous donation from The Wasily Family Foundation.