An Indian-origin researcher has discovered a biomarker that can help predict the success of chemotherapy in ovarian cancer patients.
The discovery, by Madhuri Koti from Queen's University in Canada, could lead to better treatment options in the fight against ovarian cancer.
"Recent successes in harnessing the immune system to combat cancer are evidence for the significant roles of a cancer patient's immune responses in fighting cancer," said Koti.
"Many of these success are based on boosting anti-cancer immunity via different therapies. Such therapies would prove to be most effective when coupled with markers predicting a patient's eventual response to a specific therapy," she said.
Koti and her team conducted the study in retrospective cohorts of over 200 ovarian cancer patients.
The study utilised a combination of recent cutting-edge and more established detection technologies for identifying the biomarkers.
Initial discovery of these markers was made in frozen tumour tissues accrued from tumour banks such as the Ontario Tumour Bank and the Ottawa Health Research Institute and Gynecology-Oncology and Pathology services of the CHUM Hospital Notre-Dame, Montreal.
Phase II validations are currently under way in retrospective cohorts of over 500 ovarian cancer patient tumours accrued from the Terry Fox Research Institute-Ovarian Cancer Canada partnered, Canadian Ovarian Experimental Unified Resource.
A major impact of this discovery is that these novel markers, when used at the time of treatment initiation in the specific type of ovarian cancer patient, will help gynecologic oncologists make decisions on additional treatment needed in these patients, thus increasing the potential for patient survival, researchers said in the study published in the British Journal of Cancer.
