One of the challenges to developing an effective screening tool for ovarian cancer is that there are multiple complex changes in the DNA of ovarian cancer cells, rather than a single change or marker.

Dr. Yoon and his team believe that at least some of these changes are linked events that may occur simultaneously and involve different large-scale mechanisms (genomic catastrophe) that could be detected. They aim to understand the relationships between the possible mechanisms involved, and how ovarian cancer can seemingly start from a single mutation and rapidly progress to a disease characterized by a complex set of DNA changes.

In this study, Dr. Yoon and his team will examine the DNA of early ovarian cancer samples, focusing on the ends of chromosome (called telomeres), while assessing the rest of the DNA through sequencing to link the different large-scale changes in the cancer DNA molecules. Through a novel “end-to-end” approach, they aim to understand the sequence of events in ovarian cancer development, enabling them to design more effective screening strategies for early detection and better clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer.