Gynecologic oncologists and pathologists with the Ovarian Cancer Research (OvCaRe) Program at Vancouver General Hospital and the BC Cancer Agency have received funding to co-lead a national study that will have dramatic impact on how ovarian cancer is diagnosed and treated.
The Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI) and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer are providing $5-million to a consortium of Canadian researchers, for a five-year, multi-site Ovarian Cancer Pan-Canadian Program called COEUR. The program will identify new biomarkers to better predict and treat this form of cancer, which will result in potential new drug treatments and a more effective application of current treatments for patients.
The COEUR team’s work will result in a new stratification system for subtypes of ovarian cancer, and will improve clinicians’ ability to determine what treatment will work best for each patient. Patients who do not respond to standard therapy can be directed to clinical trials where new therapies are being validated.
B.C.’s OvCaRe team will be lead by Dr. David Huntsman, a genetic pathologist, director of OvCaRe, and professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at UBC.
“We are thrilled to participate in this prestigious program,” said Huntsman in a news release. “In 2008, the OvCaRe team showed that ovarian cancer is not just one disease, but several different subtypes. Progress requires that we develop cancer prevention and treatment strategies for each subtype.
“The COEUR biomarker validation resource will enable us to work with collaborators from across Canada to discover, develop and validate a new generation of tools to better manage this cancer. We have put a large emphasis on the transfer of knowledge from the lab to the community to ensure our findings will be rapidly adopted across Canada and around the world.”
Ovarian cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the Western world. In Canada, Ovarian cancer affects one in 70 women and there are approximately 2,600 new cases annually.
In British Columbia, about 300 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year and an estimated 240 will die from it. One of the confounding issues in treating this disease is that one in every four women diagnosed with this form of cancer is resistant to standard first-line chemotherapy.
In additional to institutional partners and investigators, other program collaborators include the Society of Gynecologic Oncology of Canada, Ovarian Cancer Canada, the Canadian Tumor Repository Network, the Canadian Pathology Study Group and the NCIC Clinical Trials Group.
— Submitted
