AACR LogoOvarian cancer is said to have cancerous growth cropping up from diverse portions of the ovary. Researchers have apparently found out a mechanism for resistance to paclitaxel in ovarian cancer, microRNA-31, thereby proposing a probable therapeutic target for surmounting chemotherapy resistance.

Ovarian cancer is said to be generally receptive to chemotherapy with paclitaxel, but occasionally cancer cell lines become resistant, which seems to render chemotherapy ineffective.

Mohamed K. Hassan, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Hokkaido University in Japan, apparently finished the research as a joint research with his associates when he was a professional assistant in South Valley University in Egypt.

Hassan commented, “MicroRNAs do not code protein, but they regulate other proteins’ expression. So identifying any microRNA as responsible for chemoresistance is, in fact, introducing a real reason for the mechanism.”

Hassan’s research team supposedly examined a group of microRNAs and recognized microRNA-31 as being accountable for this chemoresistance. MicroRNA-31 seems to control the protein IFITM-1.

Hassan mentioned that they need to further verify this observation in clinical ovarian cancer samples and find a way to inhibit this target protein to improve the effect of paclitaxel and prevent the risk of recurrence.

The research was presented at the second AACR Dead Sea International Conference on Advances in Cancer Research: From the Laboratory to the Clinic.