Evaluating Poor Outcome for Manitoba Women with Ovarian Cancer
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Date
2015-08-07
Authors
Love, Allison
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Abstract
Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal form of gynecological cancer. EOC
patients have a low survival rate primarily due to the late stage at which the disease is
diagnosed (typically after metastasis), and the high rate of recurrent disease. While the
majority of patients respond to initial chemotherapy [typically with a platinum agent
(carboplatin) and a taxane (paclitaxel)], up to 75% of EOC patients will relapse within 18
months with chemotherapy-resistant disease. There is a desperate need to identify
markers of resistance and novel pathways that may be targeted for treatment.
Experiments have been conducted to gain insight into cell surface markers and/or
signalling pathways associated with EOC drug resistance. Altered cell surface expression
of several candidate pathways has been identified in a drug-resistant EOC cell line,
A2780-cp. To extend these studies, further validation of cell surface protein expression
will be conducted using additional EOC cell lines and EOC cells isolated from EOC
patient ascites. Several serial samples of EOC cells isolated from patients before and after
development of drug resistance are also available for testing and validation. Cell surface
marker expression will be correlated with clinical parameters indicating platinum drug
resistance. The student will learn to assess clinical data regarding patient response to
chemotherapy. Moreover, experiments to alter cell surface marker expression in the drugresistant
A2780-cp and drug-sensitive A2780-s cell lines will be done to assess the
contribution of candidate markers/signaling pathways to development of drug resistance.
The proposed studies will test the hypothesis that candidate cell surface markers can be
used to predict formation of clinical chemotherapy resistance.
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Keywords
epithelial ovarian cancer, CancerCare Manitoba (CCMB)