Tatva Biosciences, LLC — Department of Health and Human Services SBIR Phase I: NCI

Description

Ovarian cancer OC disproportionately affects the women of African American AA background at all stages of the disease from presentation through treatment Most upsetting fact is that AA patients have greater mortality and their survival rates are continuously decreasing as compared to Caucasian American CA Success in understanding and characterizing the involved mechanisms in existing racial disparity is greatly hampered by the lack of suitable cell line models Therefore our specific objective of this SBIR Phase I proposal is to standardize the procedure and collaborative set up for developing novel ovarian cancer cell lines to advance OC health disparity research This will be achieved in two parts A development of in vitro cell line experimental model of ovarian cancer and fibroblast cells from freshly resected tumors ascites fluid of AA patients B Genetic characterization of newly developed cells by isoenzyme profiling Karyotyping short tandem repeat profiling and mutational analysis Moreover we will characterize the developed cell line for typical morphology growth rates population doubling time tumorigenic and metastatic potential and drug sensitivities Successful completion of the proposed research would establish a standardized protocol for generation of novel cell line models of OC and thus provide a strong foundation for our next step i e Phase II for developing up to cell line models from patients of AA backgrounds as well as genetic admixtures