Moving towards personalising treatment for women with ovarian cancer

Background

Each year more than 1,500 Australian women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The outcomes for these women have barely changed over the past 20 years with a low five-year survival rate of only 45%.

New evidence shows there are extensive genetic and molecular differences between ovarian cancer tumours, resulting in a wide variation in response to standard treatment approaches. The past few years has seen a rapid expansion in the number and variety of targeted treatments for cancer. Whilst researchers are working towards more personalised treatment approaches based on the type of ovarian cancer, system-wide changes are needed for new targeted treatments to be efficiently tested and implemented into routine care.

The research

Professor Anna deFazio wants to create a new treatment pathway so that a patient with ovarian cancer can be screened at the time of diagnosis to determine the molecular profile of her cancer. If standard treatments are not effective based on the clinical, pathological and molecular characteristics of the tumour, the patient would be matched to and offered enrolment in a specific clinical trial for treatment.

We already know from research the importance of screening a patient’s tumour to determine the molecular features to get the best result from treatment. A significant obstacle to this treatment pathway being widely available is the ability to implement this ‘precision medicine’ as part of routine practice. Professor deFazio and her team will tackle this problem and create a model of cancer care for women with ovarian cancer which will be sustainable within the health system.

To reach this goal, the team will

• analyse the molecular profile of more than 300 ovarian cancer patients in NSW to better define ovarian cancer patient subsets
• evaluate how successful a patient’s referral was to a relevant clinical trial as an outcome of molecular testing.
• evolve current methods of communicating complex molecular test results to the treating clinical team to provide them with easy interpretable information.
• use ovarian cancer cells from patient samples to print 3D models of ovarian tumours to test new treatment approaches. The results will be used to design new early-phase clinical trials, especially where women are diagnosed with particularly poor-prognosis tumour types.