Many patients with advanced ovarian cancer treated with frontline therapies still end up with clinically undetectable amounts of cancer cells afterward, called minimal residual disease (MRD), leading to high likelihood of recurrence. However, there are no reliable tests to detect MRD, and its biological features remain understudied. Residual cancer cells escape the effects of surgery and chemotherapy and are the reason why cure rates for advanced ovarian cancer have remained low for many decades.
To provide insights, researchers led by Amir Jazaeri, M.D., examined the detection rates and prognostic value of methods via minimally invasive, second-look laparoscopy and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in 95 patients with high-grade epithelial ovarian cancer. Forty of 95 patients (42.1%) had surgically detected MRD, which was associated with poorer progression-free survival. The researchers used spatial multi-omics to characterize these lesions, providing insights into signaling pathways and identifying potential targets in MRD tumors to guide personalized treatments for patients with advanced ovarian cancer.