Ovarian Cancer Surrogates to Study Platinum Resistance

Although most patients with ovarian cancer respond well to optimal surgical debulking and platinum-based chemotherapy, the majority of them will relapse and in this setting, cure is uncommon. In order to improve the survival rates for our patients, a better understanding of chemotherapy resistance is needed. To achieve this goal, researchers need surrogates of ovarian cancer (or Avatars) that accurately reproduce the biology of those tumors in the laboratory so new drugs can be tested for efficacy. The Avatars presented in this proposal are such surrogates. They will be used to better understand the role of DNA repair as it relates to chemotherapy resistance.