New Treatment for Ovarian Cancer Discovered

According to a new study, published in the most recent issue of the journal Cancer Research, a new treatment for advanced ovarian cancer may have been discovered.

Researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, led by Dr. Anil K. Sood, professor in the Departments of Gynecologic Oncology and Cancer Biology, found that a new compound, named TG2 (transglutaminase G2), is associated with ovarian cancer.

TG2 is a protein. When this TG2 protein is expressed abundantly by the organism it seems to catalyze a series of biochemical processes that leads to the development of different types of cancers and tumors. This is what researchers have found for the first time.

According to the study, excessive amounts of TG2 in the body seem to be associated with breast cancer and cancer of the pancreas. The study say that late-stage ovarian cancer progression could be reversed if the TG2 is targeted and eliminated from the system. When the TG2 was targeted and eliminated from animal systems, ovarian cancer progression was significantly decreased and reversed in some instances.

The study was able to enroll 93 women with ovarian cancer at different stages. Levels of TG2 were examined and it was found that those women with higher levels of TG2 had a lower survival chance than those with lower levels of TG2.

Also, the study showed that women with advanced stages of ovarian cancer had a biochemical overexpression of the gene that codes for the TG2 (~70%). It seems that this overexpression of TG2 activates a "tumor survival biochemical partway", known in medicine as the p13K/Akt pathway, which makes the tumor resistant to drugs.

In terms of using TG2 as a new therapeutic approach to treat ovarian, and maybe, other types of cancers, the study say that interfering with the overexpression of TG2 may be beneficial. In fact, researchers found that by altering a small strand of RNA called TG2 siRNA, the expression of TG2 can be shut off. (RNA stands for Ribonucleic Acid, which the direct product of the expression of a gene).