Developing a new treatment for ovarian cancer
AUSiMED is delighted to be supporting a cutting-edge Australia-Israel ovarian cancer collaboration that will help save women’s lives.
The facts about ovarian cancer
Each day in Australia, four woman are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and three will be die from disease.
These statistics highlight the urgent need for innovative research to discover more effective treatments that will help women diagnosed late stages of the disease survive their diagnosis long term.
The reserchers
Dr. Ruth Perets, Director of the Women’s Cancer Laboratory and oncologist at Rambam Hospital. She is a principal investigator on all Phase 1 clinical trials in Rambam’s Oncology Division.
Assoc. Professor Ron Firestein, Head of the Cancer Centre at Hudson Institute of Medical Research. He is an expert in functional genomic technologies to identify new targets for cancer therapy.
The research
This research aims to develop a new therapy to treat women diagnosed at late stages of ovarian cancer and potentially prolong their lives.
Dr Perets has shown that removing a protein called PAX8 from ovarian cancer cells leads to cancer cell death. This is exciting research because it means that PAX8 could be a plausible target for ovarian cancer therapy. Dr Perets and Assoc Professor Firestein are combining their expertise to discover which proteins regulate the expression of PAX8 in ovarian cancer and in normal cells. These proteins will be tested to determine their potential as targets for ovarian cancer therapy.