Ovarian cancer is a complex disease composed of multiple distinct molecular and clinical subtypes. The survival rate for ovarian cancer has remained largely unchanged over the past three decades, despite the rapid advancement of our knowledge of the molecular and genetic mechanisms underlying most of the subtypes of ovarian cancer. There is, therefore, an urgent need to rapidly translate this knowledge into improved clinical outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer.
There have been significant clinical responses of certain specific types of cancer to so-called targeted therapies that are designed to inhibit specific molecular defects that some tumours appear to be dependent upon. These molecular defects can be detected by performing genetic tests on the tumour tissue and the corresponding targeted therapy selected for the particular patient. This approach, known as personalised medicine, offers a new management paradigm for patients with cancer. Thus far, there are several targeted therapies, either approved or undergoing late-stage clinical trials in other types of cancer that based on their mechanism of action could potentially benefit patients with ovarian cancer.
In this project we have developed an assay comprising genes, known to be mutated in ovarian cancer at a frequency of >0.5%, linked to targeted therapies. This ovarian cancer mutation panel will be used in the ALLOCATE (Australian Ovarian Cancer Assortment Trial) study, which intends to screen Australian patients diagnosed with advanced platinum – resistant ovarian cancer with the aim of sorting patients into various treatment arms based on the molecular and genetic make up of their tumours. Before this ovarian cancer mutation panel can be used to test samples from identifiable patients we first need to analytically validate the assay to be certain that it can indeed detect the appropriate molecular and genetic defects and to establish laboratory procedures to ensure that it is feasible and affordable to screen patient samples in a clinical context.