Rachael Turner, MD, PhD

2025 Early Career Investigator Grant

University of Rochester

Project Summary
Immunotherapies harness the power of the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. Though immunotherapy has undeniably changed cancer care in recent years, there are currently no approved drugs for ovarian cancer. Through this project we seek to understand how a tumor biomarker, HE4, decreases immunotherapy response and creates a suppressive immune system in ovarian cancer. We also intend to identify strategies to circumvent this immune cell suppression and increase the chance immunotherapy will work in ovarian cancer. The end goal of this project is to generate a new treatment for ovarian cancer that is highly effective and well tolerated.