Targeting Apoptotic Vulnerabilities in Ovarian Cancer

Project summary

Ovarian cancer is among the most lethal cancers in women and over 60% of the patients diagnosed with this disease eventually succumb to it. In order to effectively treat aggressive ovarian cancers and have the potential for cure therapies must strongly induce cell death in cancer cells. Existing therapies, including the highly effective drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel, damage key components within cancer cells and can cure some patients. However, in most patients the ovarian cancer cells become resistant to therapy and the tumor typically regrows within a few months or years. Recently, new medicines have been developed that can enhance the ability of standard chemotherapies to activate tumor cell death, thus potentially providing an unprecedented opportunity to increase cure rates in many cancers, including ovarian. By combining standard therapies with cell death-promoting BH3 mimetics (medicines that inhibit pro-survival proteins that keep cancer cells alive), clinicians will be able to extend remissions or increase cure rates by delaying or preventing the development of treatment resistance in tumor cells. Importantly, BH3 mimetics have been already approved by the FDA for use in some cancers, with spectacular results observed even in patients that have been previously treated with multiple other therapies. The goal of our studies is to understand how to best use these new, highly effective drugs to improve treatment outcomes for women with ovarian cancers.

This grant was made possible in part by a generous donation from The Edmée Firth Fund for Research in Ovarian Cancer (EFFROC).