Tulane Cancer Center researcher Tyler Curiel received a four-year grant of more than $1.2 million from the National Cancer Institute to continue research into the mechanisms whereby ovarian cancer undermines immunity and continues to grow.

In previous studies, Curiel, his colleague Weiping Zou, and their research team identified a pathway that ovarian cancer tumors use to turn off the body's ability to fight the cancer. This pathway acts as an on/off switch, says Curiel, professor and chief of hematology and medical oncology at Tulane.

Zou, Curiel and their collaborators have shown how ovarian tumors flip the switch to turn off the body's immune system and "re-program" the immune system to malfunction, allowing the cancer to progress.

Working with tumor cells taken from ovarian cancer patients who volunteered for the research, the team transplanted human cancer cells into mice that lacked an immune system. The scientists then also transplanted the human immune system into the mice. Then, the team demonstrated a means to halt the tumor from activating the on/off switch. Curiel and his team plan to attack ovarian cancer from this new angle, hypothesizing that the pathway they discovered makes ordinarily helpful T cells go bad and contribute to tumor growth rather than tumor destruction. "T cells are the fundamental immune cells that help you fight off colds and viruses and we think they help you fight off cancers as well," Curiel explains, "but when a patient has cancer, some of the T cells in the body begins to kill the body's killer cells. So it's like friendly fire -- soldiers, instead of going out and shooting the enemy, shoot their own soldiers instead."

The funding will allow the research team to continue looking at these renegade T cells, called regulatory T cells (Tregs), and specific signals that appear to suppress immunity and allow tumor growth.

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cancer killer of women in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be more than 25,000 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed this year in the U.S. The chances of survival from ovarian cancer are better if the cancer is found early. However, only 25 percent of ovarian cancers are found at an early stage.

In addition to continuing the work with the mouse model that the team developed, Curiel and his team are currently conducting clinical trials with human patients who volunteer. For more information about their ongoing clinical trials, call 504/988-8840.