Research overview
Fighting Chemoresistant Ovarian Cancer: A New Target in Sight
Ovarian cancer is one of the deadliest cancers affecting women. The most common and aggressive type is called high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC), which often starts in the ovaries or fallopian tubes. While many patients initially respond well to chemotherapy, most will see the cancer come back, and over time, the cancer stops responding to treatment. This resistance to chemotherapy is one of the biggest challenges in improving survival rates.
To better understand why this happens, Dr Yu Yu’s research team studied tumour samples from 60 women with ovarian cancer, including some who responded well to chemotherapy and others who did not. Using a specialised technique that identifies which genes are active in specific parts of the tumour, the team discovered a set of genes involved in a cell-to-cell communication system known as the SLIT-ROBO signalling pathway. While this pathway has not been extensively studied in ovarian cancer, the early findings suggest that some of its key players are more active in tumours that resist chemotherapy.
The team believes this pathway may be helping cancer cells to survive treatment.
This project aims to:
1. Find out how common this SLIT-ROBO pathway is in ovarian cancer and see if patients with higher levels of these proteins have poorer survival due to chemoresistance.
2. Test a new treatment in lab-grown mini-tumours (called organoids) taken from patients. This treatment uses special bispecific antibody that targets the SLITs or ROBO proteins in the pathway, with the hope of stopping the cancer from relapsing.
If successful, this research could lead to a new way to treat women with ovarian cancer who no longer respond to standard treatments, offering new hope.
Project researchers
Dr Yu Yu
Partners
Curtin University
Funders
Women and Infants Research Foundation
Project timeline
2025 – 2026
