Tumor heterogeneity has important consequences for personalized medicine in ovarian cancer

Abstract

Most patients with ovarian cancers relapse, and treatment failure has often been attributed to chemoresistance in tumor cells. Emerging evidence indicates that tumor heterogeneity may play an equally important role. Although the idea of tumor heterogeneity is not new, little attention has been focused on applying it to understand and control ovarian cancer progression. Recent advances in understanding its generation model, original basis, consequent problems, and derived therapies provide great potential for tumor heterogeneity to be a new insight in treatment of ovarian cancers.