W&I team develops<br> ovarian cancer test

PROVIDENCE – Dr. Richard G. Moore, director of the Center for Biomarkers and Emerging Technologies and a gynecologic oncologist with the Program in Women’s Oncology at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, and a team of researchers have developed an new test, known as a chemoresponse assay, to guide the treatment of women with persistent or recurrent ovarian cancer.
The group published an article in the November issue of the professional journal Gynecologic Oncology detailing how the team’s use of a chemoresponse assay on tissue samples from ovarian tumors can help tailor the most effective treatment for them.
Moore, who is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, and the team spent eight years studying the assay’s effectiveness in choosing course of treatment in women with platinum-sensitive and platinum-resistant tumors. Such tumors do not respond to many types of treatment and are labeled “persistent,” or they return after treatment, making them “recurrent.”
The publication capped the release of the results of the eight-year study, which showed that women diagnosed with ovarian cancer who undergo cancer tumor testing to determine the best treatment have better survival rates than women who do not.
“We demonstrated that using a tissue sample from the woman’s tumor and a chemoresponse assay can help us determine the best treatment for her,” Moore said in a statement. “Such testing allows us to identify the chemotherapeutics that are active against the individual patient’s disease and those that are not, which would result in decreased toxicity from ineffective treatments.”
The use of such personal-directed therapies increases overall survival, making the results of this work by Moore and his team the first in two decades to show a significant impact on ovarian cancer survival.

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