Novel technologies in the treatment and monitoring of advanced and relapsed epithelial ovarian cancer

Abstract

Epithelial Ovarian cancer (EOC) is the fifth most common cause of cancer death in females in the UK. It has long been recognized to be a set of heterogeneous diseases, with high grade serous being the most common subtype. The majority of patients with EOC present at an advanced stage (FIGO III–IV), and have the largest risk for disease recurrence from which a high percentage will develop resistance to chemotherapy. Despite continual advances in diagnostics, imaging, surgery and treatment of EOC, there has been little variation in the survival rates for patients with EOC. In this review we will introduce novel bioengineering advances in modelling the lymphatic system and real-time tissue monitoring to improve the clinical and therapeutic outcome for patients with EOC. We discuss the advent of the non-invasive “liquid biopsy” in the surveillance of patients undergoing treatment and follow-up. Finally, we present new bioengineering advances for palliative care of patients to lessen symptoms of patients with ascites and improve quality of life.

Multi-Omics Analysis of the Therapeutic Value of MAL2 Based on Data Mining in Human Cancers

“…Most patients show non-specific symptoms or no symptoms at all when cancer cells have invaded other organs of the body, which makes it difficult to detect during the early stages. Moreover, there is no effective screening method for the early detection of OC; thus, almost 80% of OC cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage ( Bristow and Chi, 2006 ; Cunnea et al, 2017 ; Smith et al, 2018 ). At present, the standard treatment for OC is mainly surgery supplemented with platinum-based chemotherapy ( Luvero et al, 2014 ).…”

A neural tract-inspired conduit for facile, on-demand biopsy of glioblastoma

“… 24–27 In fact, the ability to continuously and frequently monitor other solid and heterogeneously evolving tumors (eg, epithelial ovarian cancer) has provided clinical benefits in the form of more informed (and effective) treatment plans, and improved median overall survival. 28 , 29 The emerging liquid biopsy approach, while showing promise for tumor sequencing and early-stage detection, 30 , 31 is currently limited to use as a correlative tool alongside traditional biopsy, mostly due to the scarcity of brain tumor material available in blood and CSF. 9 , 13 This means that the sensitivity required to find and evaluate the minimal amount of useful material will be prohibitively high.…”