Ovarian cancer has long been a tough nut to crack for the medical community.
Despite improvements in surgery techniques and chemotherapy drugs, the survival rates for certain types of ovarian cancer haven’t really improved over the past several years.
This can be really tough on patients, as they sometimes go through treatments that don’t work for them.
This happens because, before the treatment starts, it’s difficult to know which tumors will react to the treatment and which won’t.
Promising New Study
However, a recent study published on August 3 in the journal Cell offers a ray of hope.
This study, carried out by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, suggests a possible way to predict which patients will respond to standard treatments.
Dr. Amanda Paulovich, a doctor and scientist at Fred Hutch, shared the exciting news: “We now have a potential 64-protein predictor that identifies up front—before they get treatment—about 35% of patients with refractory disease at a very high specificity.”
In simple words, this means they’ve found a way to tell whether about a third of patients with a certain type of cancer are likely to respond to standard treatment.
The Importance of Early Identification
Why is this so important? Well, if doctors can tell in advance that a patient is not likely to respond to standard treatment, they can guide the patient towards a clinical trial instead.
This could potentially save patients from going through treatments that are unlikely to work for them.
Dr. Paulovich and her team focused their research on a particular type of ovarian cancer called high-grade serous ovarian cancer.
This type of cancer is responsible for the highest number of deaths from ovarian cancer, and it’s also the type that has seen the least improvement in survival rates over the decades.
Ovarian Cancer’s Complex Nature
One of the main challenges with this type of cancer is its complex nature, which makes it hard to predict which treatments will work.
As Dr. Paulovich explains, “These tumors have a complex phenotype, so there’s no one single biomarker that distinguishes them and identifies which treatment they’ll respond to.”
To solve this problem, she and her team have developed ways to measure thousands of proteins and genetic markers in tumors.
This process, known as proteogenomics, allows them to look for patterns that could reveal how a patient’s tumor will respond to treatment.
The Study’s Findings
In their recent study, Dr. Paulovich and her colleagues examined proteins and genetic markers in 242 high-grade serous ovarian cancers.
They were able to identify 64 proteins that signaled whether a tumor would respond to standard initial treatment.
Even more exciting, they discovered five different types of high-grade ovarian tumors, each driven by different biological processes.
This finding could give scientists new targets for future treatments, potentially offering more options for patients whose disease is resistant to chemotherapy.
Towards Improved Cancer Diagnostics
As an oncologist who treated breast cancer patients before pursuing research, Dr. Paulovich is dedicated to improving cancer diagnostics.
“My goal is to better predict how tumors will respond before patients undergo treatment so they don’t have to waste their time on treatments that won’t work and so that we can identify treatments that will work,” she says.
This study represents a significant stride towards that goal. With further research and clinical application, it could open the door to more personalized, effective treatment plans for ovarian cancer patients in the future.
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The study was published in Cell.
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