Chemotherapy Resistance Believed a Major Cause of Failure of Current Ovarian Cancer Therapies

Ovarian cancer is the most deadly of gynecologic malignancies and the fourth leading cause of all cancer deaths of women in the United States [1]. Because the disease is essentially asymptomatic early in its progression, approximately 70% of all ovarian cancers are not diagnosed until advanced stages (FIGO stage III or IV) when long-term prognosis is poor (,20% long-term survival) [2]. The current standard treatment for patients with advanced ovarian cancer is cytoreductive surgery followed by platinum/taxane combination therapy [3]. While this treatment can be effective in the short-term, 80% of patients relapse within 5 years. The failure of current therapies to significantly improve the longterm survivorship is believed to be due primarily to the development of chemotherapy resistance, e.g. [4,5].

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