New OCRF Research on Ovarian Cancer Proliferation, Migration, and Response to Therapy

Research funded by Ovarian Cancer Research Fund shows that adipose derived stromal cells derived from the human omentum can promote ovarian cancer proliferation, migration, chemoresistance and radiation resistance in-vitro.

The research, funded in part through an OCRF grant to senior author Ann Klopp, MD, PhD was published online last week in PLoS One.

The researchers hypothesized that the high rate of ovarian cancer metastasis to the omentum may be due to a population of adipose derived stromal cells (O-ASC) which can form supportive tumor stroma.  To investigate the impact of these cells on ovarian cancer, they isolated O-ASC from patients with and without omental metastasis and compared their effects on ovarian cancer cell proliferation, migration and response to chemotherapy.  The research team found that O-ASC from patients with advanced ovarian cancer preferentially supported migration and in some cases proliferation and chemotherapy resistance of ovarian cancers.  Future studies will focus on determining the characteristics of tumor promoting O-ASC with the goal of developing new approaches to inhibit these effects.

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