Lea Schäfer
Cancer Researcher at University College Dublin
Ovarian cancer is the second most common type of gynaecological cancer in the Western world. In certain cases, chemotherapy is no longer an effective treatment, but this phenomenon remains a scientific mystery.
Most women are diagnosed when the disease has already spread, and eventually, most women stop responding to standard anti-cancer drugs, like chemotherapy. This reaction is also known as chemoresistance. Why and how chemoresistance develops is still unclear.
What is chemoresistance?
Imagine your body as a garden full of healthy, beautiful flowers. Cancer cells can grow like unwanted weeds in a garden. At first, an herbicide can remove these weeds just like chemotherapy often works well against cancer cells. But sometimes, the weeds return and even develop a protective shield, making it hard for the herbicides to work.
Similarly, cancer cells can protect themselves from chemotherapy drugs, which makes it harder to get rid of them. If we could identify special markers (also known as biomarkers) on these resistant weeds — or in this case, cancer cells — they could function as early warning signs and give information on what drugs could effectively remove them.
We previously found a gene (called NKAPL) that changes when ovarian cancer tumours stop responding to chemotherapy. My project aims to discover whether NKAPL could be used as a biomarker helping clinicians to step in earlier with alternative treatments, sparing women repeated rounds of chemotherapy that may not benefit them.
Ultimately, this research could help us to better understand why
chemotherapy stops working in some patients
How the research process looks like
To investigate this, I’ll grow ovarian cancer cells in the lab and look at preserved tumours surgically taken from patients. I’ll measure their levels of NKAPL and examine whether they’re linked to treatment response. Then, I’ll explore how NKAPL causes cancer cells to resist chemotherapy. Ultimately, this research could help us to better understand why chemotherapy stops working in some patients and how we can kill these resistant cells using alternative drug combinations.
This project has been made possible through the continued guidance and support of my supervisors, Assoc Prof Antoinette Perry and Dr Sharon O’Toole, with essential funding provided by Research Ireland and the Irish Cancer Society.
