Grant: Operating Grant

Epithelial ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic cancer in women. In order for ovarian tumors to grow, they must recruit new blood vessels through a process called angiogenesis. We have shown previously that an effective treatment against ovarian tumor development is to inhibit this new blood vessel formation. Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) is a potent inhibitor of ovarian tumor vessel growth and slows growth of new tumors and can cause regression of established disease. In addition to preventing blood vessel growth, TSP-1 also directly kills tumor cells, while leaving healthy cells intact. We plan to evaluate the ability of TSP-1 treatment to synergize with, and increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy drug treatmet. In this application, we propose to increase the effectiveness of TSP-1 mediated therapy in ovarian cancer and to devise novel therapeutic approaches that may significantly improve our ability to treat this disease.