Title: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy for ovarian cancer

Biography:

Paulette Mhawech-Fauceglia is an American Board certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology since 1989 and she has a vast experience in Pathology and special expertise in Gynecologic Pathology. She spent her entire professional career in academic settings, first in Geneva University hospital, Switzerland then Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), Buffalo-NY and University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. She held numerous positions as Professor and Director of Gynecologic Pathology at RPCI and USC. She is very well published pathologist with more than 150 publications in peer review journals as well as numerous book chapters. She is an expert in tissue microarray and focusing on immunomarkers in cancer patients, interpreting FISH and extracting DNA and RNA for proteonomics, nanostring and other techniques. She is now a Gynecologic Consultant in Austin, Texas.

Abstract

Approximately 70% of women with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) are diagnosed with advanced stage disease, which is associated with high morbidity and mortality. The standard of care in advanced stage ovarian cancer is still primary debulking surgery and optimal debulking surgery should be defined as no residual tumor load. Recently, and after been widely used in Europe for more than 10 years, neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery (defined as debulking surgery after 3 to 4 months of induction of chemotherapy) has been gaining momentum of being considered as the standard of care in numerous cancer centers throughout the US. Retrospective studies showed that neoadjuvant therapy seemed to be as good as the standard primary tumor debulking surgery for advanced stage ovarian cancer. New clinical trials using immunotherapy have been conducted on naive ovarian cancer as well as chemotherapy ovarian cancer. However, the role of pathology in handling and reporting the histologic findings in debulking surgery specimen is still widely variable. The histologic features can vary and reporting them can be very crucial and important in patient care and management.