Force Cancer Charity: Working locally to support anyone affected by cancer

Investigations into the mechanisms involved in secondary spread of ovarian cancer 

Ovarian cancer survival rates are much lower in women whose cancer has spread to other organs.  Ovarian cancer is unusual in the way that it spreads because the cancer cells are shed from the outside of the ovary into the fluid in the abdomen and then they simply float around and attach to the outside of other organs in the abdomen. A major site of spread is the omentum (a sheet of fatty tissue). Ovarian cancer cells attach to the outside of the omentum and then invade the tissue and start to grow as secondary tumours. The endothelial cells lining the blood vessels in the omentum are important for this spread because as a tumour grows it releases chemical signals which activate the endothelial cells causing them to change and grow new blood vessels. This is essential to feed the growing secondary tumour.  This project looks in detail at what chemical signals are released from ovarian cancer cells and the effects of these signals on endothelial cells isolated from the omentum. If we can find out exactly what these signals are and what they do at the cellular level then hopefully we can design ways of preventing new blood vessel, and thus secondary tumour growth, in the omentum.