Debarshi Roy, PhD

Deciphering differential regulation of metabolic pathways in chemosensitive and –resistant ovarian cancer cells using repurposed therapeutic agents and natural products

Cancer has remained one of the leading causes of death second to heart disease in the U.S. One major characteristic of the disease is aberrant proliferation, which leads to metastasis. Ovarian cancer (OVCA) could be therapeutically regulated and controlled if diagnosed in its early stage. OVCA is the leading cause of gynecological malignancy affecting female reproductive health nationwide. Post-menopausal women tend to develop a poor prognosis due to delayed screening. Due to absence of detectable symptoms and lack of screening, OVCA can go undetected until the patient has reached advanced stages of the disease resulting in metastasis. Another issue with OVCA is the drug-resistant nature of the disease. Studies have shown that relapse of OVCA often occurs in 75% of patients mainly resulting from the development of drug resistance. Therefore, there is a critical need to identify agents to target OVCA and avoid the current drug resistant nature of this deadly disease. A major challenge in OVCA research is to account for the multi-drug resistant nature of the disease. Current treatments usually yield adequate recovery which has a 5-year post intervention life expectancy. However, ~75% of patients experience incurable recurrences that shorten these estimates. The concept of drug repurposing is a time- and life-saving strategy, which bypasses safety and efficacy testing and expediates that start of Phase II clinical trials. By identifying proven safe and efficacious drugs with known anticancer potential, drug repurposing is one way to fast-track US Food and Drug Administration approval. In this proposal, we aim to investigate the potential of combined treatment of a repurposing agent metformin (anti-diabetic agent) and curcumin (available from turmeric root) for treatment of chemo-sensitive/resistant ovarian cancer cell lines.