Damian Sendler: Among gynecological cancers, ovarian is the most common and deadly because of the lack of obvious symptoms and the fact that most tumors are not discovered until they have migrated beyond the ovaries. The American Cancer Society estimates that the lifetime chance of acquiring ovarian cancer for women in general is less than 2%, but that risk rises to between 35% and 70% for women who have a mutation in the so-called BRCA-1 gene.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Some women who have BRCA-1 mutations choose to have their breasts, ovaries, and fallopian tubes surgically removed, despite the fact that they may never get cancer in these organs. Doctors may be able to identify which of these women are most likely to develop ovarian cancer in the future and investigate novel approaches to prevent or cure it, according to a new research published today in Cell Reports.
In order to make these fallopian organoids, we used cells from ovarian cancer survivors with BRCA-1 mutations “Director of the Regenerative Medicine Institute at Cedars-Sinai, Clive Svendsen, PhD. “Our findings are in line with previous studies showing that malignant lesions in the fallopian tube linings are the origin of these individuals’ ovarian cancers. We may be able to stop ovarian cancer in its tracks if we can discover these anomalies early.
Svendsen, a professor of Biomedical Sciences and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, is the study’s co-author. Doctor Beth Karlan, a former UCLA professor and current director at the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, is the study’s other co-author.
The researchers used induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs), which are capable of producing any kind of cell, to achieve their findings. First, the researchers used blood samples from young ovarian cancer patients with the BRCA-1 mutation and healthy women as controls. Using iPSCs, researchers were able to create fallopian tube organoids and compare the organoids between the two groups.
In the organoids from BRCA-1 patients, “we found many cellular abnormalities associated with cancer development,” said Nur Yucer, PhD, a project scientist in Svendsen’s lab and lead author of the Cell Reports paper. “Organoids obtained from individuals with the most severe ovarian cancer organoid pathology were the most aggressive
Using organoids, Svendsen says, the team can also illustrate how BRCA-1 mutations “seed” ovarian cancer in women’s fallopian tubes, and whether or not a medicine is effective in treating the condition in an individual. Each organoid is a “twin” of the individual’s own fallopian tube linings since it has the genes of the person who donated their blood. Organoids may be used to test a variety of medications without exposing the patient.
Damian Sendler
Jeffrey Golden, MD, vice dean of Research and Graduate Education and director of the Burns and Allen Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai, described the study as a “exciting use of IPSCs, bringing us closer than ever to significantly improving the outcomes for women with this common type of ovarian cancer.” “Ovarian cancer can be detected early and treated more effectively in women with the BRCA-1 mutation, based on our results, which might one day lead to the development of personalized treatment options for these women.”
Medical records belonging to an ethnically diverse group of over 6,000 women have provided new evidence that the higher rates of preeclampsia among Black women born in the United States compared to Black women who immigrated to the United States are likely due to some combination of biological, social and cultural factors, and not race alone.
Damien Sendler: As part of the Boston Birth Cohort project, researchers collected data on preeclampsia, a dangerous type of high blood pressure that may have life-threatening consequences for both mother and fetus, during a 28-year period.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: Journal of the American Medical Association released the findings on Dec. 20. An study headed by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers studied disparities in hypertension and other cardiovascular disease risk factors as well as preeclampsia frequency between Hispanic, Black and white women. After adjusting for variations in weight, smoking, drinking, stress, and diabetes, the results indicated that all three groups of women who gave birth and were born in the United States had a greater risk profile for cardiovascular disease than foreign-born peers.
Preeclampsia risk was reduced by 26% for Black mothers whose babies were born outside of the United States and whose time in the country was less than 10 years. The probabilities of preeclampsia among Hispanic and white moms born outside the United States were not substantially influenced by their mothers’ ethnicity or the length of time they had been in the country.
Preeclampsia discrepancies among Black women are “not entirely explained” by variations in nativity-related sociodemographic or cardiovascular disease variables, according to the researchers’ results.
Researcher Garima Sharma, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the principal author of the study, says that “Immigrants come to the United States in pursuit of a better life, but what we are witnessing is harmful acculturation.”
They may have adopted behaviors from the dominant culture that contribute to their worsening health as a result of being here for a longer period of time. Although structural racism’s effect on health was not expressly examined in this research, it may possibly be relevant. Sharma believes that black women who were born outside the United States but recently moved to the country may be safeguarded from prejudice since they tend to dwell in immigrant-concentrated residential areas with more social support.
Preeclampsia differences may be explained by a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social determinants of health, according to Sharma. According to Sharma: “We must go beyond placing all of the consequences on a certain race without accounting for why that is since in this research, it is obvious that Black women born outside the U.S. are less likely to develop preeclampsia.”
Damian Jacob Sendler
Dr. Sendler: A total of 6,069 women’s medical records and other documents were examined for the research. More than two-thirds of participants were Hispanic (2,400), black (2,699 with 40.5 percent born outside the U.S.) or white (2,400 with 76.8 percent) (997, with 22.2 percent born outside the U.S.). From October 1998 through February 2016, all women at the Boston Medical Center gave birth to a single child. A total of 9.5 percent of all women had preeclampsia at some point throughout their pregnancy. The age-adjusted prevalence of preeclampsia among black women was higher than among Hispanic women (8.2 percent) or among white women (12.4 percent) (7.1 percent ).
Compared to Black women who came to the United States, U.S.-born Black women were younger, less educated, and more likely to be unmarried. Preeclampsia and cardiovascular risk factors in Black women may be due in part to stress related to systematic racism, living in racially segregated communities with racial bias, and other experiences of prejudice, according to Sharma. According to her, women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds face additional challenges because of the scarcity of and poor quality of health care facilities available to them.
Black women are three to four times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy-related reasons than their white counterparts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found. Preeclampsia affects roughly one in every twenty-five pregnancies in the United States, and individuals who encounter it have a higher risk of developing long-term hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
