The Translational Ovarian Cancer Research Program (TORCP)
A collaboration between Gynecological Oncologists & Basic Scientists of the LRCP
What is the TORCP?
This group was officially formed in Jan. 2007 with the arrival of Dr. Trevor Shepherd as the 1st Translational Oncology Scientist of the Cancer Research Laboratory Program (LRCP). Dr. Shepherd is an accomplished ovarian cancer researcher and brings critical expertise needed for this group to develop a new research program designed to enhance productive “bench to bedside” interactions between basic scientists and clinicians.
This group was officially formed in Jan. 2007 with the arrival of Dr. Trevor Shepherd as the 1st Translational Oncology Scientist of the Cancer Research Laboratory Program (LRCP). Dr. Shepherd is an accomplished ovarian cancer researcher and brings critical expertise needed for this group to develop a new research program designed to enhance productive “bench to bedside” interactions between basic scientists and clinicians.
Currently the group consists of Gynecological Oncologists: Drs. Monique Bertrand, Akira Sugimoto, Michel Prefontaine, and Dominique Lanvin; as well as Basic Scientists: Drs. Trevor Shepherd, Gabriel DiMattia & Jim Koropatnick. Our laboratory activities are located at the LRCP (A4-921) at the Victoria Campus of the LHSC.
Group Objectives
The primary goal of this group is to perform research focussing on the cause and treatment of ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is a difficult disease to treat simply because it is often diagnosed in the latter, more advanced stages of the disease. This is primarily because symptoms of the disease do not usually appear until the disease has become “advanced”. Therefore one of our goals is to develop new laboratory models of ovarian cancer (in vitro & in vivo) to study and identify the early events leading to ovarian cancer. Understanding how the disease starts and progresses is integral to designing new therapies and identifying biomarkers that could be used for early disease detection.
We are also dedicated to training new ovarian cancer scientists at the M.Sc. and Ph.D level. All of our ongoing research projects are geared to graduate students and the group provides a unique learning environment because students will have structured exposure to clinical cases and frequent interaction with the Gynecological Oncologists. Our objective is to instill the importance of creating productive collaborations with our clinical colleagues to develop translational research projects always with patient care in mind. We hope to make significant contributions not only to ovarian cancer treatment and detection, but also in turning out new scientists with an appreciation and dedication to “translational cancer research”.
Current Research Projects
Understanding the role of the Id1 transcriptional repressor in ovarian cancer. This is based on the work of Dr. Shepherd showing that this gene regulatory factor is overexpressed in ovarian tumours and has previously been shown to act as an oncogene in other tissues. The idea here is that higher than normal levels of this protein are caused by secreted growth factors of the Bone Morphogenetic Factor family present in ovarian cancers. The high levels of Id1 then disrupts the normal gene expression program of ovarian surface epithelial cells making them prone to neoplastic transformation. We are attacking this problem using primary ovarian cancer cells from patients and by developing new mouse models where we have dysregulated expression of the Id1 in the ovary.
Dr. Shepherd is also collecting and banking human ovarian cancer cells from patients to be used in a variety of cellular and molecular studies. Currently these studies focus on demonstrating a role for the Id proteins in altering the cancer phenotype (ie., proliferation, adhesion, etc) of patient ovarian cancer cells. Our clinical collaborators have been key to the success of this aspect of the program. These ovarian cancer cells are a unique resource with which we can test new cancer therapeutics and ask relevant questions regarding the signalling pathways activated in ovarian cancer cells. An important objective of this endeavour is to provide other LRCP researchers with these cells to establish new collaborative research projects therein strengthening ovarian cancer research in London.
We are also investigating the cellular origins of different ovarian cancers by assessing the ability of female reproductive tissues to form tumours that then present as ovarian tumours. This project involves the use of primary human cells from patients as well as mouse models.
