New approaches to ovarian cancer: the tumour’s own immune cells help to overcome chemoresistance

Ovarian cancer often responds well to chemotherapy at first, but usually returns in a chemoresistant form. A team led by Dr. Ricardo Coelho at the University Hospital Basel now shows that combining the investigational drug birinapant with standard chemotherapy kills significantly more cancer cells than chemotherapy alone. Surprisingly, this enhanced effect depends on immune cells within the tumor, known as macrophages, which send out a signal that further boosts the effect of the treatment. In the future, the findings could help predict which patients will benefit most from this therapy. The Wilhelm Sander Foundation supported the project with €134,000.