Study pursues markers to improve ovarian cancer treatment, diagnosis.

2004 MAY 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Identifying protein markers in the blood that indicate how ovarian cancer responds to therapy is one goal of a Medical College of Georgia pilot study.

"We want to identify new, more specific markers that will give gynecologic oncologists and their patients a better idea of how ovarian cancer is responding to treatment so they can change treatment if it's not working," said Daron G. Ferris, MD, family medicine physician and director of the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Center at the MCG Medical Center, Augusta, Georgia.

"We also want to identify markers that can be used as an effective screening test for this disease, which unfortunately is typically caught in its later stages. When the Georgia Cancer Coalition provided the opportunity for funding a pilot project to do this, we seized the opportunity," said Ferris, principal investigator on the study recently funded by the Georgia Cancer Coalition, a charitable organization formed in 2001 to improve cancer treatment in Georgia.

Ovarian cancer is among the top five cancers diagnosed in women, and although survival rates can be as high as 80% to 90% when caught early, most cancers are found after the disease has progressed, because it's asymptomatic early on and because there is no screening test, explained Sharad Ghamande, MD, gynecologic oncologist and a co-investigator on the new study. With current standard treatment - surgery to remove the tumor followed by chemotherapy - survival rates for late-stage ovarian cancer are 30% to 35%.

Long term, the researchers' quest for biomarkers may lead to better treatments by identifying specific proteins expressed by ovarian cancer that could be targets for drugs, such as monoclonal antibodies designed to help the body attack the cancer.

Researchers will take blood samples at various intervals as women with ovarian cancer proceed from diagnosis to treatment to remission to disease recurrence or continued remission, then use advanced, high-throughput technology called proteomics to look at protein expression changes, as well as differences between those who respond best to therapy and those whose cancer recurs.

"You don't have to look at every single protein; you only have to ...