By Phil Williams
phil@franklin.uga.edu
A noted Atlanta gynecologist and the University of Georgia have signed an agreement to collaborate on a new organization that will give hope to women suffering from one of the most deadly diseases they face: ovarian cancer.
The new Ovarian Cancer Institute will combine Dr. Benedict Benigno’s quarter of a century in the field with the expertise of geneticists at the University of Georgia to explore new methods of diagnosing—and ultimately treating—ovarian cancer.
“We have such a large number of patients that we will be operating on that it will give us a considerable amount of data that can be synthesized and made meaningful in a short period of time,” says Benigno. “The institute will also be involved in training physicians in the diagnosis and management of patients with cancer of the ovary. Also, I intend to train health-care professionals who will go out and talk to women about the early warning signs of the disease.”
Heading UGA’s part of the effort will be John McDonald, an internationally recognized expert on retroviruses, stealthy disease-causing agents that are responsible for a number of illnesses. McDonald’s expertise in the action of genes is especially pronounced in the area of transposable elements—genes that actually move around.
McDonald will direct a molecular genetics laboratory on the UGA campus that will perform numerous state-of-the art genetic tests on ovarian-cancer tissue removed in the operating room. All this tissue will be frozen for use at a later date. A major goal of the new lab will be the development of a “marker” that will potentially provide an early diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the way that the Pap smear leads to early diagnosis of cervical cancer.
“This represents a unique collaboration between a major research university and a private medical institute,” says McDonald. “We believe this collaboration has the potential to lead to major discoveries in the diagnosis and treatment of ovarian cancer.”
Ovarian cancer strikes some 27,000 American women a year, but the five-year survival rate is not much better than it was 25 years ago, says Benigno, whose Southeastern Gynecologic Oncology Group is one of the largest ovarian-cancer surgery groups in the country.
“Because there are no early warning signs or any effective screening tests, the patients invariably reach us when the tumor has metastasized through the abdominal cavity, presenting extraordinary challenges,” says Benigno. “We want to empower women to take charge of their health care when these symptoms are first seen.”
Both McDonald and Benigno believe that the Ovarian Cancer Institute will soon make Georgia a national and international referral center for the disease as research and therapy are refined. Agreements with hospitals and pharmaceutical companies may be forthcoming, says Benigno.
McDonald says that the recent completion of the human genome project gives scientists information on all the genes in the human body, and with currently available technology the team can screen the expression of all human genes in a single experiment. As recently as five years ago, teams could only examine a single gene at a time—greatly complicating the tasks as hand. “The power of these techniques is tremendous, and to focus them on a specific disease like ovarian cancer has great potential,” says McDonald.
Central to the effort is a state-of-the-art laboratory device called a microarray analyzer, now housed at UGA, that will allow the team to screen tissues from cancer patients to look for genetic components to the disease. This machine will compare information on the 50,000–80,000 genes in the tumor to healthy tissue, making the identification of target genes possible. Within a year, the device will be moved to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta, where the routine screening of tissues will continue. The more basic research aspects of the project will continue on the UGA campus, specifically aimed toward the development of a blood test for ovarian cancer and potential therapies.
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