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Promising ovarian cancer research by Melanie Rutkowski, PhD, at the UVA Comprehensive Cancer Center has won $700,000 in support from the Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancers in partnership with Pelotonia and AACR, the American Association for Cancer Research.

Rutkowski has been selected as a Victoria’s Secret Rising Innovator, receiving a Research Grant in partnership with Pelotonia and AACR to further her studies of the role of the microbiome — the collection of microorganisms that live within us — in ovarian cancer and in the disease’s stubborn ability to resist immune therapy. Her work is shedding important light on understanding why ovarian cancer is so difficult to treat with immune therapies and could lead to better treatments to improve patient outcomes.

“It is such a tremendous honor to be selected as one of the recipients for the Victoria’s Secret Global Fund for Women’s Cancer Rising Innovator Research Grant,” says Rutkowski, part of the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology at UVA School of Medicine. “Most studies focus on how tumor cells drive resistance to immune therapy. Our lab has identified a pathway that is driven by our immune cells when they recognize commensal bacteria. However, we do not fully understand why these interactions have such a negative effect on the immune system.”

The Microbiome and Ovarian Cancer

The three-year grant will support Rutkowski’s investigations into how faulty cellular signaling undercuts the body’s ability to detect and fight off ovarian cancer. She has found bacteria in the gut interact with particular immune cells to suppress the body’s immune response. This ultimately leads to the failure of immunotherapies designed to bolster that immune response and help the body destroy the cancer cells.

With the Victoria’s Secret grant money, Rutkowski aims to better understand how chronic exposure to the microbiome affects immune cells and the “microenvironment” that surrounds ovarian tumors. This microenvironment includes immune cells, blood vessels and other substances that can, collectively, either encourage or stifle cancer growth.

Rutkowski hopes her work will lead to ways to counter the effects of the faulty cellular signaling and, ultimately, enhance the effectiveness of immunotherapy for ovarian cancer.

“This grant will help us understand how and why these interactions lead to immune therapy failure, moving us a step closer to developing novel therapeutic interventions that enhance the immune system’s ability to kill cancer cells for patients with ovarian cancer,” Rutkowski says. “Outcomes for ovarian cancer are dismal, and immune therapy has the potential to offer a significant therapeutic benefit if we could figure out how to block the central pathways that drive resistance. The goal will be to use the discoveries from this award to eventually develop a novel immune therapy that can reinvigorate the immune system and ultimately improve outcomes for ovarian cancer.”

About the Victoria's Secret Research Grant

The Victoria’s Secret Fund for Women’s Cancers Rising Innovator Research Grant, in partnership with Pelotonia and AACR, supports midcareer scientists performing innovative research in breast and gynecological cancers. It seeks to foster innovation in the understanding, prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of these cancers, with the goal of improving outcomes and eliminating cancer health disparities. The latest class of grant recipients is available on AACR’s website.

Finding new and better ways to treat the most complex and challenging diseases is a primary mission for UVA’s new Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology. The institute aims to accelerate how quickly lab discoveries can be translated into lifesaving new treatments for patients.

UVA’s commitment to enhancing the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy — and the institution’s long history of success with therapeutic applications for focused ultrasound — also have prompted UVA Health to launch the world’s first Focused Ultrasound Cancer Immunotherapy Center. The center is exploring how combining immunotherapy with focused sound waves could improve immunotherapy effectiveness and revolutionize care for many different cancers. 

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