Barroilhet and Patankar receive Wisconsin Partnership Program grant for ovarian cancer research

Congratulations to Lisa Barroilhet, MD, MS, director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology, who is co-investigator on a Collaborative Health Sciences Program grant from the Wisconsin Partnership Program for a study to investigate ways to use immunotherapy for ovarian cancer treatment. Jenny Gumperz, PhD, professor in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, is the principal investigator on the grant. Manish Patankar, PhD, director of the Division of Reproductive Sciences, is also a co-investigator.  

Collaborative Health Sciences Program grants provide up to $600,000 over three years. The project “Synergizing OXPHOS-inhibitors and Innate T cell-DC Cellular Immunotherapy to Treat Ovarian Cancer” builds on work by Barroilhet and Patankar to understand and apply atovaquone, a common anti-malarial treatment, to ovarian cancer prevention and treatment. In this proposal, they hope to use atovaquone to change tumor cell behavior, to make it more vulnerable to immunotherapy treatment.