Dr James Brenton

Dr James Brenton

Functional Genomics of Ovarian Cancer
Cambridge Research Institute
Cambridge

Finding new ways to overcome drug resistance in ovarian cancer

Dr James Brenton is based at our Cambridge Research Institute. He is studying why cancer treatments work for some people and not others even though they have the same disease. His research particularly focuses on ovarian cancer and understanding why some women respond well to existing chemotherapy drugs while others have tumours that are 'resistant' to treatment.

Dr Brenton and his team started out by collecting ovarian cancer tissue from women before and after they were treated with the chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and paclitaxel. The researchers then used sophisticated techniques to study the levels of different molecules inside the cancer cells in each of these samples.

Using this approach, the team has identified several proteins that correlate with how well women respond to treatment. These include TGFBI, which is decreased in ovarian cancers that are resistant to paclitaxel.

These discoveries are now being followed up in the lab to find out in greater detail how these proteins influence a person's response to treatment.

The ultimate aim is for these proteins to be used as 'biomarkers' in the clinic to predict who will and who won't respond. This approach would allow doctors to tailor treatments to individual patients.

Some of these proteins may also serve as targets for the development of new treatments for ovarian cancer, which could significantly improve the outcome for women who are resistant to the existing chemotherapy drugs.

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