Daniela Dinulescu, PhD
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Nanotechology-based Therapy Targeting Platinum Resistant Disease
An exciting new hypothesis in ovarian cancer biology is that tumor development is driven by cancer stem cells, which are resistant to standard chemotherapies and consequently responsible for the high rate of tumor relapse seen in patients. Animal models, which accurately recapitulate the human disease, used in Dr. Dinulescu’s laboratory constitute great tools for defining the key roles that ovarian cancer stem cells play in tumor initiation and resistance to chemotherapy. Furthermore, they provide her team with unique, relevant systems in which to screen novel nanotechnology-based therapies specifically targeting ovarian cancer stem cells that show increased efficacy and lower toxicity than currently available chemotherapy drugs.