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Trying to Identify the Cell Responsible for Ovarian Cancer

Due to the lack of screening tools for detection of early stage ovarian cancer, most ovarian cancer is diagnosed late, when the disease has already spread in the patient’s abdomen. At a late stage, current treatments are less effective. Late detection of the tumor also has hampered the study of where and how these tumors arise…

New Genetic Mutation Increases Risk of Ovarian Cancer

08/17/2011Researchers in the United Kingdom have discovered a new genetic mutation that increases the risk for ovarian cancer.  This major finding was published online in the journal Nature Genetics on August 7th. Much like the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, which were discovered in the 1990s and which also increase a woman’s risk for ovarian cancer…

Jeff Boyd, PhD, Appointed Chair of OCRF Scientific Advisory Committee

11/17/2009 The Board of Directors of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF) is pleased to announce that Jeff Boyd, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, PA, has been appointed Chair of the OCRF Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). The Scientific Advisory Committee is charged with evaluating research proposals to ensure that OCRF's funding is directed to the most promising and innovative ovarian cancer research…

International Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium: Finding Genetic Markers of Ovarian Cancer Using Polymorphisms

While some ovarian cancers arise in women with inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, the genetic changes responsible for most ovarian cancers, which are not inherited, remains unknown. Understanding these latter genetic changes could lead to better diagnostics and treatment for the disease. Dr. Berchuck is the Principal Investigator of the International Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC)—that includes researchers at 19 institutions in the U.S.…

A New Class of Drugs with Potential Against Ovarian Cancer: PARP-inhibitors

PARP-Inhibitors represent an exciting new class of drugs that are proving to be highly effective for women with hereditary ovarian cancer. Women with inherited mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 (roughly 5 percent to 10 percent of all patients) seem to be particularly sensitive to these oral drugs, which have few side-effects. Dr. Delic is focused on trying to understand how PARP-Inhibitors cause cancer cell death…

Method to Determine if a Male Hormone, Naturally Present in Woman, Affects the Risk of Developing Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies. Over the past decade much has been learned about the causes of hereditary ovarian cancer, but little is known regarding the genetic risk factors for sporadic or non-hereditary ovarian cancer. Inherited mutations in two genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, are responsible for approximately 10 percent of all ovarian cancer…

Developing Mouse Models of Ovarian Cancer

Research in the laboratory of Dr. Connolly is aimed at the development, refinement and analysis of mouse models of epithelial ovarian cancer. Mouse models of human cancers provide researchers with valuable tools to identify and study the causes of tumor initiation and progression and the means to identify genetic and immune modifiers that are important in the disease process…

Does Ovarian Cancer Originate in the Fallopian Tube?

For several decades, scientists have believed that cells from the ovarian surface epithelium are where ovarian cancer originates. Surface epithelium emerged as a candidate because of its ability to form different types of cells, its responsiveness to women’s hormones, and its presumed susceptibility to chronic disruption and repair during ovulation. But direct evidence of the transformation of benign epithelial cells to malignant epithelial cells in ovarian cancer has not been demonstrated…

How Hereditary and Non-Hereditary Cancer May Have Something in Common

Mutations in the BRCA1 gene account for more than 30 percent of hereditary ovarian cancer and carriers of BRCA1 mutations have a 10 percent to 50 percent risk of acquiring ovarian cancer early in their lifetime. Although BRCA1 mutations are rarely found in sporadic or non-hereditary ovarian cancer, loss of BRCA1 expression has been shown in 30 percent to 60 percent of sporadic ovarian cancers…

Models to Study Hereditary Ovarian Cancer

Epithelial ovarian cancers are thought to arise as a result of the accumulation of multiple genetic alterations that transform ovarian surface epithelial cells. Approximately 10 percent of epithelial ovarian cancers are hereditary and due to mutations in the BRCA1 gene. The more common non-hereditary ovarian cancer and hereditary ovarian cancers are similar in some respects, but patients with hereditary cancers develop the disease earlier and display a longer recurrence-free interval…

Novel Approaches to the Androgen Pathway and Genetic Predisposition to Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian Cancer is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies. Over the past decade we have learned much about the causes of hereditary ovarian cancer, but little is known regarding the genetic risk factors for sporadic ovarian cancer. Inherited mutations in two specific genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, are responsible for approximately 10% of all ovarian cancer…

A Possible New Marker for Drug Resistance of Ovarian Cancer

For most ovarian cancer patients, a combination of surgery and postoperative chemotherapy is the standard of care. Chemotherapy consists of six cycles of Taxol and Carboplatin. In spite of a high response rate, many patients still develop and succumb to recurrent disease. Through a global genomic profiling study, Dr. Huang has identified that XIST (inactive X chromosome specific transcripts) gene expression level significantly correlates with Taxol sensitivity and disease-free periods of patients…