View clinical trials related to Ovarian Neoplasms.
Filter by:The purpose of this study is to create a tissue bank of gynecologic cancers and normal tissue for the study of cancer in order to better understand the changes occurring on a molecular level (DNA, RNA, protein) that lead to the development of cancer.
This study intends to assess the ability of contrast-enhanced ultrasound in the detection of benign and malignant ovarian masses compared to unenhanced ultrasound. By using an intravascular contrast agent, this noninvasive and feasible imaging technique will allow the investigators to define specific microcirculation patterns in 100 women with ovarian lesions. The intravascular contrast agent properties will be compared between benign and malignant adnexal masses. The final purpose of this ultrasonography is to allow the early detection of tumors and to improve the characterization between benign and malignant lesions.
Ovarian cancer is the first in mortality rate of the gynecologic malignancies and the overall 5-year survival rate of ovarian cancer is only 20–30%. Besides, the incidence of ovarian cancer increased in recent years in Taiwan. Ovarian cancer is indeed a disease that should be respected, however, there has only been a little research done focusing on it in Taiwan. Patients with ovarian cancer who have stage I disease (localized to ovaries) after optimal surgical staging do not need any adjuvant therapy. In contrast, patients with disease spreading beyond the ovaries have median survival rates that decrease to < 10% for patients with bulky residual disease after surgery and treated with platinum-based combination chemotherapy. In developing effective therapy for ovarian cancer, there should be a distinction between preventative and therapeutic approaches. Immunoprevention will be developed for women who are at an increased risk for the development of ovarian cancer. In contrast, immunotherapy would be used as an adjuvant to surgery or in combination with chemotherapy or other biologics as chemoimmunotherapy or biochemoimmunotherapy. Mesothelin is expressed in some normal epithelial cells and is elevated in certain carcinomas. Mesothelin has been reported to be selectively overexpressed in most of the non-mucinous ovarian carcinomas. In addition, the specific epitopes of mesothelin in the HLA-A2 and A24 haplotype have been identified. It seems that mesothelin has the potential to be a target antigen for the immunotherapy of ovarian cancer. So the investigators would like to provide this proposal to address the development of mesothelin -specific immunologic assays. There are two aims in this project: 1. to develop and utilize assays to measure cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) to mesothelin, and 2. to evaluate the mesothelin-specific immunologic responses between normal control and ovarian cancer patients.
Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies and the overall 5-year survival rate of ovarian cancer is only 20-30%. Additionally, the incidence of ovarian cancer has increased in recent years in Taiwan. Ovarian cancer is indeed a disease that should be respected, however, there was very little research work focusing on it in Taiwan. Patients with ovarian cancer who have stage I disease (localized to ovaries) after optimal surgical staging do not need any adjuvant therapy. In contrast, patients with cancer spreading beyond the ovaries have median survival rates that decrease to less than (<) 10% for patients with bulky residual disease after surgery and treatment with platinum-based combination chemotherapy. In developing effective therapy for ovarian cancer, there should be a distinction between preventative and therapeutic approaches. Immunoprevention will be developed for women who are at an increased risk for the development of ovarian cancer. In contrast, immunotherapy would be used as an adjuvant to surgery or in combination with chemotherapy or other biologics such as chemoimmunotherapy or biochemoimmunotherapy. The folate receptor (FR) is expressed in some normal epithelial cells and is elevated in certain carcinomas. The FR has been reported to be selectively overexpressed in 90% of non-mucinous ovarian carcinomas. The specific epitopes of the folate receptor in the HLA-A2 haplotype have been identified. It appears that the folate receptor could be a target antigen for the immunotherapy of ovarian cancer. Therefore the investigators would like to propose the development of folate receptor-specific immunologic assays. There are two aims in this project: 1. to develop and utilize assays to measure cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) to folate receptors, and 2. to evaluate the folate receptor-specific immunologic responses between normal controls and ovarian cancer patients.
Ovarian cancer is the first mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies. The incidence of ovarian cancer increased in recent 10 years. Ovarian cancer indeed is a disease that should be respected, however, there were only few of research work focusing on it in Taiwan. To study the mechanisms of carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer will help us understand this disease and develop new strategies of diagnosis and prevention for ovarian cancer in the future. The present diagnostic methods of malignancy are clinical symptoms, physical examination, evaluation of tumor markers and instruments. It is a important issue to diagnose cancer earlier to improve the survival of cancer patients. By the development of biomedical science, many genes have been identified to be related with the carcinogenesis. If we can detect the possibility of genetic mutation earlier, we may deal with the suspected areas of malignancy as soon as possible. To our present knowledge, carcinogenesis of ovarian cancer has strong correlation with some special genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. There is 1 out of 200 normal population with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation in the western countries. The incidences of BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation even increase to 30-50% in the population of familial ovarian cancer. Women with BRCA1 gene mutation have 80% to get breast cancer before the age of 70 and 63% of them would get ovarian cancer before the age of 70. Women with BRCA2 gene mutation have 80% to get breast or ovarian cancer before the age of 70. It seems that the genetic diagnosis of BRCA1/BRCA2 has its clinical practice. The development of new instrument- denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC) is to use automated detection to find out the minute or single mutation of nucleotide. It has been applied to the clinical service by utilizing DHPLC for the genetic diagnosis of BRCA1 and BRCA2 of breast cancer patients in the department of Genetic Medicine of our hospital. It will become a most powerful tool to establish the database of BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation of the ovarian cancer patients in Taiwan, when we can use the technique of DHPLC combining with the direct DNA sequencing.
Ovarian cancer became a more and more important disease in recent years due to its first mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies. The incidence of ovarian cancer also increased in recent year in Taiwan. The lack of symptoms, difficulties in early diagnosis, insufficient accurate tumor markers, and lack of information about ovarian tumor biology contribute to the poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients. The prognostic parameters for ovarian carcinomas are tumor stage, histologic subtype, degree of malignancy, and residual tumor after surgical treatment. However, these factors present an incomplete picture of the tumor biology of ovarian cancer and are frequently interrelated. Thus, the identification of new biologic factors predictive of individual disease course and prognosis would be extremely useful. Detection of tumor markers that are released into the circulation can aid in the diagnosis and/or monitoring of therapeutic responses of patients with various tumors, including carcinomas of ovary. CA125 is the most commonly used serum marker for patients with ovarian carcinoma. Although it has proven clinically valuable in monitoring the response of patients to therapy, some ovarian carcinomas do not express CA125, and CA125 often is increased in patients with inflammatory disease. Thus, there is a need for improvement, either in the form of a more specific and/or sensitive assay or an assay that uses a different marker and can be used to complement CA125 toward the goal to improve patient survival by improving diagnosis. Mesothelin is a 40-kDa glycosylphosphatidylinositol-linked glycoprotein. In normal tissues, the expression of mesothelin has subsequently been shown to be largely restricted to mesothelial cells, although immunoreactivity has also been reported in epithelial cells of the trachea, tonsil, fallopian tube, and kidney. Mesothelin has been shown to be over-expressed in pancreatic carcinomas, gastric carcinoma and ovarian carcinoma, and it seems that mesothelin may be utilized as a new tumor marker for ovarian carcinoma. We will evaluate that if mesothelin can be a new potential tumor marker for ovarian cancer in this proposal.
An ovarian cancer cell line (OVTW-59) derived from an ovarian endometrioid carcinoma was established and its sublines, labeled as P0, P1, P2, P3, and P4 with increasing invasion abilities were selected from transwell invasion chambers.Using cDNA microarray and verified with quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, we have identified IGFBP-3 as an invasion-suppressor gene. We plan to study the role of IGFBP-3 in ovarian cancer invasion.
RATIONALE: To improve strategies for detection and prevention of early-stage disease. PURPOSE: This research study is collecting specimens and data to develop better methods for early detection and prevention of ovarian cancer among the high risk population and those who have the disease.