New biomarker detects body reaction to chemotherapy improving cancer treatment

A reason many patients lose their chance of surviving ovarian cancer is because they are opting out of chemotherapy. With a recent discovery, researchers are hoping this new biomarker will help patients with high-grade serious ovarian cancer (HGSC) and thus, make better decisions about their treatment options.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - This groundbreaking research was published in the British Journal of Cancer, stating that it could provide help with the use of biomarkers to identify a patient's reaction to chemotherapy.

Researchers have previously worked on a study that showed the gene change due to involvement of NF-KB, a protein, affected the resistance to chemotherapy within the line of HGSC.

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Due to the changes induced by the protein, researchers also investigated the "'crosstalk' between the micro-environment of the cancer cells inside the tumor and the cancer cells themselves," as reported by Medical News Today. Out of the samples they used, they observed the tumors that had resisted and those responded with the treatment are both about half.

With each year, about 152,000 women around the world die due and related to gynecological cancer, but if the cases were detected earlier, this wouldn't be the case.

In her lifetime, there is about a 1 out of 75 chance that a woman gets ovarian cancer and about a 1 in 100 chance she will die from it, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS).

Researchers, however, are positive that with the new discovery of biomarker, doctors will be able to determine what immunotherapy treatment will help the patient boost her chances of responding to chemotherapy, increasing the likelihood of her survival from ovarian cancer.

"Such therapies would prove to be most effective when coupled with markers predicting a patient's eventual response to a specific therapy," said study's lead author Madhuri Koti.

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