Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death for women from cancers, with about 25,000 women diagnosed in North America each year. Ovarian cancer is divided into subtypes based on molecular characteristics and clinical outcome. Although we have understood ovarian cancer as many diseases, the treatment has remained the same for the past 30 years for all subtypes - untargeted platinum-based chemotherapy. Clear cell ovarian cancer (CCOC) is the second most common subtype of ovarian cancer affecting many women. At late stage, it is more aggressive and resistant to current chemotherapy compared to other subtypes. Although deadly, CCOC is still not well understood and lacks effective targeted therapy. Existing molecular and genomic studies suggest that it is a metabolically driven malignancy, but its metabolic profile has not yet been studied. This research will be the first characterization of a large cohort of clinical cases of CCOC using protein expression in conjunction with global metabolite profiling. Understanding of the altered metabolism in CCOC will revolutionize the ovarian cancer research community and provide strong foundations on which to build further discoveries. Most importantly, we hope that identifying targetable metabolic pathways will guide the development of more effective therapies to help patients with this deadly disease.