Scientists have identified sixteen potential therapeutic targets in low-grade serous ovarian cancer by studying proteins at the molecular level, with results published on August 11, 2025, in the journal Cancer Cell.
The research was led by Ernst Lengyel, MD, PhD of University of Chicago, along with Matthias Mann, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Germany. While this study was not funded by OCRA, Dr. Lengyel is a former member of OCRA’s Scientific Advisory Committee and an OCRA grantee. Hilary Kenny, also an OCRA grantee from the University of Chicago, contributed to the project.
Using a technique called Deep Visual Proteomics, the team created molecular maps of thousands of proteins. Their analysis revealed specific proteins that may play a role in the development of low-grade serous ovarian cancer — insights that could help guide the creation of new treatments for this rare and hard-to-treat disease.
In an article for Medical Xpress, Dr. Lengyel explained,
For gynecologic oncologists, metastatic low-grade serous ovarian cancer is one of the most challenging cancers to treat—patients are young when they get sick and it is resistant to chemotherapy. Our intent was to build a clear roadmap of how these tumors progress and evolve to find concrete therapeutic targets that we can pursue in clinical trials.
Read more about the study in the Medical Xpress article, “Molecular mapping reveals how benign borderline ovarian tumors become invasive.“
