How cancer resists treatment is the focus of a £1.5million Cancer Research UK project in Edinburgh to find new ways to tackle aggressive ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer is one of the most common difficult-to-treat cancers affecting women worldwide. In Scotland, around 600 people are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, 7,600 in total across the UK.*
While ovarian cancer is typically responsive to initial chemotherapy, relapse – when cancer returns after treatment – remains a common and devastating occurrence.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, are launching an innovative study focused on understanding how a particular mechanism known as epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) contributes to chemoresistance in ovarian cancer.
EMT is a natural process in the body where epithelial cells, which line organs and tissues to form barriers, change their role to become mesenchymal cells, which are more flexible and capable of rebuilding and repair.
Some aggressive cancers use this process to repair and resist damage to cancer cells caused by chemotherapy and use it to improve their mobility to invade other parts of the body (metastasis).
Lead researcher Dr Robb Hollis, of the Institute of Genetics and Cancer at the University of Edinburgh and Cancer Research UK Scotland Centre, said: “Ovarian cancer remains one of the most challenging cancers to treat. The main problem being the development of treatment resistance if cancer comes back after initially successful treatment.
“Ovarian carcinosarcoma, a particularly rare type of ovarian cancer, provides a unique opportunity for research as it arises directly through the EMT process, which has been linked to treatment resistance.
“By identifying the molecular triggers of EMT and chemoresistance, we aim to make a real difference for ovarian cancer patients by finding new treatments that target these molecular triggers.”
The molecular switches that activate EMT and contribute to chemoresistance at different stages of the disease will be a key focus, and the research will compare samples taken at diagnosis, at relapse and from both primary and metastatic sites.
It is hoped to identify and validate new therapeutic approaches that could be used to prevent or reverse chemoresistance.
These therapeutic approaches could then be fast-tracked into clinical trials, improving the likelihood of success due to the well-established dosing and toxicity profiles of some already investigated drugs.
Cancer Research UK Director of Research, Dr Catherine Elliott, said: “The identification of the impact of mechanisms like EMT, which have the potential to help cancer cells resist treatment, is crucial for our ultimate goal of improving outcomes and survival rates.
“The results of this study could significantly enhance our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie chemoresistance in ovarian cancer and could help lead to new treatment options for patients in the future.”
While this research is focused on ovarian cancer, the findings will be relevant to other cancer types where EMT is implicated in drug resistance.
Insights gained could potentially be applied to a wide range of cancers, contributing to the development of new therapeutic strategies that can overcome chemoresistance.
