Translational Centers of Excellence (TCE’s) were started at Penn Medicine's Abramson Cancer Center so that flagship medical programs could be created.  These Centers bring together experts from diverse fields in cancer research to address major challenges in cancer care facing the world today.

Faculty from the Penn community were invited to form teams and develop multidisciplinary, disease-specific Centers to try to find solutions to the most pressing issues confronting cancer patients.  These Centers will hopefully accelerate the pace of discoveries that will help today's patients become — and stay — cancer-free.  Everyone from scientists and engineers, to medical doctors,  have been brought together to help eradicate cancer completely.

One of the TCE’s formed is the Ovarian Cancer TCE.  They are working to transform ovarian cancer by bridging the gap that sometimes occurs between research and patient care and what is being developed in the lab versus what the patients receive when cared for in the clinic or hospital. The goal is to provide new therapeutic options to patients being treated for, in this instance, ovarian cancer. The TCE bridge will make it easier than ever before, to rapidly translate new laboratory findings into clinical practice and allow us to provide patients with new therapeutic options.

Tumor Banking is when living tumor tissue is collected from patients cared for by gynecologic oncologists.  Tumor samples are currently being collected when an initial diagnosis is made or there is a recurrence of the cancer is found.  The samples become part of the Ovarian Cancer Research Center (OCRC) Tumor Biotrust and are used to study how ovarian cancer evolves over time with the goal of discovering more effective treatment options.

Read more about this potential new treatment strategy from Penn Medicine here: https://www.pennmedicine.org/cancer/cancer-research/translating-research-to-practice/ovarian-cancer-tce