Melanie Rutkowski, PhD, a researcher at the University of Virginia Comprehensive Cancer Center, has received a $700,000 grant to advance her work on ovarian cancer. The funding comes from the Victoria's Secret Global Fund for Women's Cancers in partnership with Pelotonia and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).
Rutkowski was named a Victoria's Secret Rising Innovator and awarded the grant to support her research into how the microbiome—the collection of microorganisms living in the body—affects ovarian cancer and its resistance to immune therapy. Her studies focus on understanding why immune therapies are often ineffective against ovarian cancer and aim to find ways to improve patient outcomes.
The three-year grant will allow Rutkowski to examine how disruptions in cellular signaling interfere with the body's ability to recognize and fight ovarian cancer. She has discovered that gut bacteria interact with certain immune cells, suppressing immune responses. This suppression contributes to immunotherapy failure by preventing treatments from helping the body destroy cancer cells.
With this new funding, Rutkowski plans to investigate how ongoing exposure to elements of the microbiome influences immune cells and the tumor microenvironment surrounding ovarian tumors. This environment includes various components such as immune cells and blood vessels that can either promote or inhibit cancer growth.
Rutkowski stated: "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. 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."
The Victoria's Secret Fund for Women's Cancers Rising Innovator Research Grant supports midcareer scientists working on innovative projects related to breast and gynecological cancers. Its purpose is to encourage progress in understanding, preventing, detecting early, diagnosing, and treating these cancers while aiming also at reducing health disparities among patients.
UVA’s Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology focuses on speeding up lab discoveries so they can become new treatments more quickly for patients facing complex diseases. Additionally, UVA Health recently launched what it describes as the world’s first Focused Ultrasound Cancer Immunotherapy Center, which is studying whether combining immunotherapy with focused sound waves could make treatments more effective across different types of cancers.
