Tell Every Amazing Lady® has funded research at some of the country’s most prestigious hospitals and institutions. For 2023, we are proud to announce partial funding of the study “Nanoparticle-boosted Dendritic Cell Therapy for Treating High-grade Serous Ovarian Cancer,” led by Assistant Professor Zongmin Zhao at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
The goal of the research is to develop a transformative immunotherapy to more effectively treat and prevent relapse of high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSC), which is the most common and lethal form of ovarian cancer. Current standard treatments for HGSC including cytoreductive surgery and chemotherapy are only partially effective and tumor relapse occurs in most patients owing to chemoresistance and immune cell evasion. To address these challenges, this study will develop a transformative dendritic cell-based immunotherapy (ACT-DC). ACT-DC is based on the combination of innovative immunoactive nanoparticles and a unique type of dendritic cell for efficient in situ antigen capturing, enhanced antigen delivery, and boosted induction of antigen-specific immune responses.
This study aims to develop more efficacious immunotherapeutic technologies that can reverse the immunosuppressive microenvironment in HGSC and generate high levels of antigen-specific T cells which has implications in vaccination development.
Partial funding of this grant was made possible by donations to the Jane Fund.
