Background: A multidisciplinary team of scientists from five major academic institutions and three advocacy groups of ovarian cancer has formed the Consortium to identify reliable predictors of long-term (LT) survivorship (including side effects of treatment and outcomes) for women with serous ovarian cancer. The five research sites include MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, University of Iowa, and three Advocacy groups: Nine Girls Ask, Clearity Foundation, and Ovarian Cancer National Alliance. Collectively, these organizations and groups bring unique expertise and resources to the Consortium to assure its success. All members of the Consortium will work closely and fully participate in design and execution of the projects. The Consortium will identify, validate, and combine gene and biobehavioral targets to develop predictors of outcomes for LT ovarian cancer survivors.

Goals: On the basis of our preliminary findings, our overall hypothesis is that coupling clinical and biobehavioral information with molecular biosignatures of serous ovarian cancers will lead to major breakthroughs in understanding the features associated with LT survival. This hypothesis will be tested using the following three projects (given the molecular differences between low- and high-grade cancers, each entity will be considered separately):

Project 1: Identify molecular predictors of long-term survivors by comprehensive examination of low- and high-grade serous ovarian cancers. This project will carry out sophisticated molecular studies of serous ovarian cancer samples from LT (>10 years) and shorter-term (<4 years) survivors.

Project 2: Examine biobehavioral and sociodemographic characteristics of LT survivors. A series of biobehavioral and demographic characteristics of LT and shorter-term survivors will be assessed.

Project 3: Identify clinical and surgical factors related to LT survival. We will examine molecular and clinical predictors of complete surgical removal of tumor and examine demographic and reproductive factors associated with LT survival.

Impact: Research proposed by this Consortium could have a major impact in understanding cancer biology beyond molecular pathway studies, leading to innovative modes of cancer research to understand the predictors of LT survival by combining biological and biobehavioral strategies for ovarian cancer. The Consortium will accomplish the above goals by using their experience to establish the infrastructure (administrative, project management) needed for the operations and use their scientific expertise (clinical, cancer research, therapeutics) to generate preliminary scientific data with the strictest quality controls. During the development phase, the Consortium researchers will use the preliminary data to come up with additional novel ideas that would be formulated and integrated into successful projects. The short-term impact of this Consortium's synergistic research would be to identify and use clinical and biobehavioral information with molecular biosignatures to predict long-term vs. short-term survivors of ovarian cancer. Such strategies will likely allow for individualization of therapy and reduction of toxicity. The long-term impact would be to utilize the knowledge gained from this work to generate intervention strategies to improve the outcome of patients who would otherwise be destined for poor survival.