Tamara Minko, professor in the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, and Lorna Rodriguez, professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, say because there is not a good screening method for ovarian cancer, most women with the disease are not diagnosed until after it has metastasized to other organs and surgery and chemotherapy are not as effective.

“Once the ovarian cancer becomes drug resistant we cannot cure it,” says Rodriguez a gynecologic oncologist who provides treatment to ovarian cancer patients and is director of the precision medicine initiative at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. “Circumventing the development of drug resistance is a reasonable approach and very much needed.”

In a new study published in Clinical Cancer Research, Minko and Rodriguez provide results of animal research in which the cancer is attacked at the genetic level by using small, inhibiting RNA molecules that directly target and decrease the excess CD44 protein in cancer cells while simultaneously treating patients with the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel.  This allows cells within the cancerous tumors to be successfully treated even at an advanced stage.

In their research, scientists at Rutgers created animal models that closely resemble the cancerous tumors found in women with ovarian cancer by injecting tumor tissues obtained from gynecological cancer patients treated at the Cancer Institute into laboratory mice.  They then used a combination of chemotherapy and gene therapy to target the cancer cells directly in order to inhibit growth and prevent metastasis while sparing normal healthy cells. The treatment killed cancerous cells in the mice, shrunk their tumors and left them with fewer side effects.