Global Research Fund

Although most patients initially respond to chemotherapy for treating ovarian cancer, the majority will become resistant to it and will relapse within two years.   

Unfortunately, there is currently no reliable test to accurately monitor a treatment’s response or to detect early signs of disease relapse.   

To address this, the Global Research Fund is helping researchers develop a new genetic blood test which can detect fragments of DNA secreted by cancer cells.   

The project will determine whether this test could be used to monitor for resistance to treatments or early cancer relapse so appropriate treatments can be administered promptly to improve patient outcomes.  

Clinical trials in other countries have demonstrated the additional survival benefit of administering heated chemotherapy (HIPEC) into the stomach after complete surgical removal of ovarian cancer.   

HIPEC in ovarian cancer has not been evaluated in the UK, although its use in expert centres (including Birmingham) is supported.   

Birmingham has one of the best ovarian cancer survival rates in the UK and HIPEC has the potential to improve this further. The Fund is supporting a study in which data from 25 patients receiving this technique will be carefully collected. Evaluation on risks to patients, safety of implementation, as well as benefits, will all be monitored to further investigate the efficiency of HIPEC in ovarian cancer cases.   

Trials have shown removing tumours in a patient where ovarian cancer has returned, significantly prolongs survival rates when all the cancer can be removed.   

However, this data was collected before the new anti-cancer drug, PARP inhibitors, were available. Researchers don’t yet know whether the impact of surgery on survival would be the same for those patients treated with these new drugs.   

It’s important for a patient not to receive unnecessary surgery if it’s unlikely to improve their survival rate, so this new study will help define the additional value of surgery in women with relapsed ovarian cancer.   

It will also collect data from patients whose ovarian cancer has returned with operable tumours and have received PAPR inhibitors. It will then compare their outcome to women who don’t receive surgery at all. 

Mucinous ovarian cancer, characterised by cells that are large and filled with fluid, accounts for three per cent of all women with ovarian cancer.   

This cancer responds poorly to chemotherapy and currently, few successful treatments exist.   

Previous research identified steroids in mucinous ovarian cancer are dysregulated and researchers now want to fully understand how the steroid hormones function.   

If the investigation confirms the project’s initial findings, the results will lead to the development of a large international study to accurately diagnose, monitor and treat women with mucinous cancer using steroidomics effectively.