Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most common lethal gynaecological cancer. Ovarian cancer is usually treated with platinum-based chemotherapy; however, a significant number of patients are resistant to such treatments and relapse soon afterwards.
In this snapshot of a cancer patient s immune system, various types of immune cells, marked in different colours, can be seen infiltrating a RAD51-Low ovarian cancer tumour (blue nuclei). Credit: Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, National University of Singapore Read Time:
Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most common lethal gynaecological cancer. Ovarian cancer is usually treated with platinum-based chemotherapy; however, a significant number of patients are resistant to such treatments and relapse soon afterwards. To improve their survival, there is a need to first identify which patients may be platinum-resistant, so that newer treatments may be administered early.
Research published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine details a novel mechanism that can be used to predict which epithelial ovarian cancer patients (E | Cancer
Researchers from the National University of Singapore have found a way to predict if ovarian cancer patients will be resistant to chemotherapy. By using automated microscopy, they identified a protein that indicates the resistance of ovarian cancer cells to platinum chemotherapy. This breakthrough could improve the survival rate of ovarian cancer patients, as other treatments may be administered early.