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Research Directions:
THE OVARIAN CANCER TUMOR BANK:
The tumor bank we established by our research team is unique in that we not only routinely banked fresh ovarian tumor tissues and ascites cells, we also immuno-affinity purified tumor cells directly from fresh tumor samples. The sorted tumor cells are more than 99% pure for the epithelial cell component and are ideal for molecular genetic analysis (especially to detect genomic deletion) and related studies 23, 26. Besides, we have established comprehensive ovarian carcinoma tissue microarrays with annotated clinical information including treatment, pathology findings and follow up in a single database which is regularly updated by clinical fellows. With collaboration with other institutions, the bank has collected hundreds of ascites samples and we are able to access blood samples from different cohorts for cancer diagnosis projects. Our ovarian cancer tumor bank has been in operation for more than 4 years and has supported several previous studies and ongoing projects. We propose to further expand this bank by routinely establishing ovarian cancer xenograft in nude mice for all new coming cases. The purpose is that the tumor xenograft may serve as valuable preclinical models to evaluate the therapeutic effects of the Chinese herbal medicine and other natural compounds.
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