JWS Fund Supports Research
Examining Resistant Tumors

Not much is known about why normal cells in a body suddenly become malignant and lost their regulatory control. That’s what cancer is — uncontrolled cellular growth.

When cancerous cells are detected, traditional treatments may include surgery (the removal of cancerous tissue), chemotherapy, which is designed to kill as many cancerous cells as possible, and the use of drug inhibitors, which prevent the growth of tumors.

A newer approach that holds great promise in the battle against both ovarian and breast cancer involves focusing on these uncontrolled cells — How did they get so strong? How did they survive the other various treatments? Did they develop some kind of resistance to certain drug agents? Research is now underway that is attempting to answer these questions and develop the right biologic agents to restore regulatory control to these cells.

The Julie W. Schaffner Ovarian Cancer Fund recently provided funds (Summer 2015) to support a joint research project between Advocate Lutheran General Hospital (Park Ridge, Ill.) and Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science (North Chicago, Ill.) that is looking into ways to treat platinum-resistant tumors which, in turn, may help produce better clinical outcomes in the treatment of ovarian cancer.

The study is off to a fast start, having recently submitted their first paper on their findings to Cancer Research, the most highly-cited cancer journal in the world.

This project is one that that we hope to support over the long-term as it continues to show promising results. We will provide updates in this space as they become available.