A major obstacle to the study of rare ovarian cancer types is access to high quality models to study these diseases. Tissue samples, collected at the time of surgery from consenting patients, are a rich resource but often any one institution has only a limited number of these rare cancers. Over the last decade we have spearheaded the creation of the Canadian Ovarian Unified Experiments Resource (COEUR) that has the largest Canadian collection of endometrioid, low-grade serous, clear cell and mucinous ovarian cancers available for study. We have extensive clinical data from each case allowing us to match discoveries with important clinical events such as treatment, cancer recurrence and survival. We have used a strategy that allows us to analyze several hundred samples at the same time ensuring that we maximize this resource.

Here we propose to use two new cutting-edge technologies to explore tissue samples from these rare types of ovarian cancer, focusing not only on the tumor cells but also looking at the cells that surround the tumor. These cells, which can be multiple cell types including cells from the immune system, are known in other cancers to play an important role in cancer progression, response to therapy and recurrence. The new technologies will provide a rich set of data that we will also share with the entire research community to maximize discoveries that we believe will ultimately improve our ability to clinically manage these rare cancers.