Developing our understanding of mucinous ovarian cancer.
Mucinous ovarian cancer is a rare form of ovarian cancer, which makes up just 2-3% of all ovarian cancer cases. It tends to affect women and people with ovaries in their 40s and 50s. Unfortunately, when diagnosed at a later stage, mucinous ovarian cancer has few treatment options.
When Professor Sudha Sundar from the University of Birmingham and her research group previously studied hormones in the urine (pee) of women getting investigated for ovarian cancer, they came across five steroid hormones which were increased in mucinous ovarian cancer. These steroid hormones were also higher in borderline or benign mucinous tumours, which are ‘precancerous’.
Over the next three years the team plans to learn more about steroid metabolism by studying mucinous ovarian cancer cell lines and organoids (where a collection of cells from this tumour type are grown in a dish to replicate a tumour). They also plan to monitor women after their initial treatment for mucinous ovarian cancer to see if these hormones can spot any recurrence of cancer earlier than the standard blood marker CA125.
Their hope is that this can one day lead to a new tool to diagnose mucinous ovarian cancer, offer potential avenues for new treatments, and a way of monitoring people’s progress through their treatment.
This project has also received funding from the Birmingham Women’s global health research programme.
Thank you to everyone who donated to the Rare Gynae Cancer Fund and made this research possible.
The team are currently recruiting for this study:
Discover more
Take a look at some more of our research that is part of the Rare Gynae Cancer Fund.
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