World Cancer Day

-Dr. Jim Petrik

Today on World Cancer Day, we are grateful for our alumni, staff and faculty focusing on cancer research like Dr. Jim Petrik who's lab's research includes female reproductive biology and ovarian cancer.

"Our lab focuses on the development of novel therapies for advanced-stage cancers. We have been working on a mechanism to enhance delivery to therapeutic compounds to the tumor. One of the challenges to treating cancer patients is the poor blood supply to the tumor. This makes treatment difficult as we rely on the vascular system to deliver therapies to the tumor, but within the tumor, the blood vessels are very dysfunctional. We have been able to destroy the dysfunctional tumor blood vessels, restoring a more normal blood flow. In doing this, we have been able to dramatically increase the uptake of therapeutic compounds. We can now administer significantly lower amounts of the therapeutic compound and have a very good response. When we combine this vascular normalization with chemotherapy treatment, we have been able to completely eradicate metastatic disease in our model of ovarian cancer, which is an unprecedented outcome." - Dr. Jim Petrik