Dr. Nan Zhang, assistant professor in the Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center’s Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program at The Wistar Institute, and their team have discovered a new approach to treating ovarian cancer. In preclinical laboratory tests, this method was shown to shrink tumors, improve survival rates, and make tumors more responsive to chemotherapy, according to the institute.
Their findings were published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine in a paper titled, ‘Myeloid Activation Clears Ascites and Reveals IL27-Dependent Regression of Metastatic Ovarian Cancer.’
“This is the first time researchers have been able to indirectly target ovarian cancer cells in peritoneal fluid by inducing an immune reaction in preclinical models,” said Zhang. “We look forward to advancing this research—particularly our findings on the role of IL27—to identify additional strategies for improving this new anti-ovarian cancer approach.”
Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecological cancer, with patients diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer having only a 30% chance of surviving five years after diagnosis.
The danger of metastasis (when cancer spreads throughout the body) is heightened in ovarian cancer for two key reasons:
- Ovarian cancer is naturally resistant to chemotherapy, making it difficult to treat wherever it occurs.
- It often spreads through peritoneal fluid into the peritoneal cavity, a large space in the body that houses the stomach and intestines. Cancer in this area is particularly dangerous because the peritoneal cavity is naturally immunosuppressive, limiting the body’s ability to respond to tumors.
To address the challenge of ovarian cancer, Zhang and his collaborators revisited a potential solution from nearly a century ago. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, New York surgeon William B. Coley achieved a cure rate of over 10% for certain cancers by injecting patients with dead pathogens. Scientists later hypothesized that this anti-cancer effect was due to the immune system’s activation of myeloid cells—abundant in the peritoneal cavity—which, when activated, can initiate a cancer-killing response.
Building on this concept, Zhang and his team developed an approach to specifically activate myeloid cells within the peritoneal cavity using a combination of β-glucan—a pathogen-derived myeloid cell activator—and interferon-gamma (IFNγ). Preliminary findings suggest that this method may help reverse immunosuppression around tumors.
Their findings confirmed that this combination therapy was effective when tested in preclinical lab models. After treating metastatic ovarian cancer models with both β-glucan and IFNγ, the total tumor burden was significantly reduced compared to controls. This disease reversal was observed even in chemotherapy-resistant strains of ovarian cancer, which the team also studied.
