Abstract:
The 5-year survival rate for High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (HGSOC) patients with traditional treatment including surgery and chemotherapy, remains less than 45%. Novel therapies such as PARP inhibitors as well as anti-angiogenic drugs have demonstrated remarkable response rates in subsets of patients, however, nearly 50% of these patients show intrinsic or acquired resistance. Sustained clinical response may be achieved by accurately identifying patients with poor prognosis before treatment begins and matching them with rational therapeutic strategies based on the molecular characteristics of their tumours. Previously, our lab discovered the Oxford Classic (OxC), a deconvolution algorithm-based analysis of the expression of 52-genes in serous ovarian cancer. A higher OxC-based EMT score correlated with worse overall survival in multiple independent patient datasets. More recently, we have developed a clinically useful risk-stratification strategy for HGSOC and identified targeted treatment options. Our findings suggest that risk-based surgical decision making as well as combination therapy that includes EMT (epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition) targeting therapies and immunomodulators could improve clinical outcomes in high-risk HGSOC patients.

Bio:
Lena Rai is a cancer researcher with extensive experience in translating research from bench to bedside gained through a career spanning both academia and the NHS. During her PhD at the University College London, she identified genetic markers for minimal residual disease monitoring in patients with Acute Leukaemia. Subsequently, as a post-doctoral scientist and laboratory lead, she helped set-up and manage the UCL adult ALL Molecular MRD lab, a central lab for multiple international clinical trials. Following this, she joined HSL Analytics (LLP), London, where her team was responsible for developing genomic assays in Haemato-Oncology, to enable personalised diagnosis, risk stratification and disease monitoring. In 2020, she joined the Clinical Genomics Department at Royal Marsden, where her team was responsible for developing and delivering pan-cancer genomic testing and interpretation of genomic alterations to guide patient management, as part of the NHS England Genomics initiative. Currently, she is a senior NIHR research fellow in Professor Ahmed’s Ovarian Cancer Cell laboratory, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. Her research is focussed on elucidating the mechanisms of treatment resistance, discovery of novel druggable targets and better prognostication of Ovarian Cancer.