Dr. Sanaz Memarzadeh on Chemotherapy Resistant Tumor Cells in Ovarian Cancer

Sanaz Memarzadeh, MD, PhD, associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the director of the Gynecologic Oncology Discovery Lab at UCLA, discusses her preclinical research on resistant tumor cells in ovarian cancer.

The majority of patients with ovarian cancer present with advanced stage disease, and despite undergoing radical surgeries and chemotherapy, many patients relapse, says Memarzadeh. It was not previously understood why this was the case, says Memarzadeh.

However, by analyzing primary tumors from patients who presented with ovarian cancer, Memarzadeh and her team at UCLA found that, while most tumor cells respond to chemotherapy, there is a subset that resist standard treatments. These resistant cancer cells are there from the beginning in most primary ovarian cancer tumors, says Memarzadeh, and they do not express the most common biomarker used for the detection of ovarian cancer. They also have the ability to quickly reinitiate the cancer, she adds.