ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, is pleased to award Elizabeth Stover, MD, the 2024 Conquer Cancer – Susan & Teresa Schwab Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation Advanced Clinical Research Award in Ovarian Cancer Research.

Dr. Stover received the award for her research “A Phase 1b study of BCL-XL degrader DT2216 in combination with weekly paclitaxel in recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.”

Most chemotherapies target cancer cells through a normal cell death process called apoptosis. Dr. Stover and others found that suppressing a specific anti-apoptotic protein, called BCL-XL, increased apoptotic cell death in ovarian cancers. Importantly, new drugs are being developed that degrade BCL-XL proteins and thereby reduce BCL-XL protein levels. Targeting ovarian cancer cells with chemotherapy increased their sensitivity to a BCL-XL degrader, DT2216. These preliminary results raised the possibility that combining chemotherapy with a BCL-XL degrader may benefit patients.

In this study, Dr. Stover and her team will conduct a clinical trial combining DT2216 with a standard-of-care chemotherapy drug, paclitaxel, in patients with recurrent ovarian cancer. They will assess the safety profile of this treatment and aim to identify the safest doses of both drugs to administer to patients in tandem. They will also measure the effects of the drug treatment on BCL-XL protein levels and apoptosis in patient samples. These studies should provide initial evidence regarding the safety of combining a BCL-XL degrader with chemotherapy in recurrent ovarian cancer. They will also lay the groundwork for testing the effectiveness of this treatment for patients with ovarian cancer.

Dr. Stover received her medical degree in 2009 from Harvard Medical School. At Harvard, she also earned her Ph.D. in 2007, with doctoral research focused on the biology of hematologic malignancies. She completed her internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2011 and a hematology/oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital in 2016. She is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she is also a medical oncologist in the Division of Gynecologic Oncology. She is engaged in translational and clinical research focusing on genomics, drug resistance, and therapeutics in ovarian cancer and other gynecologic cancers.

The Conquer Cancer – Susan & Teresa Schwab Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation Advanced Clinical Research Award (ACRA) in Ovarian Cancer Research is a three-year, $450,000 grant that provides a mid-career physician scientist with the funding needed to conduct original, patient-oriented, currently unfunded ovarian cancer research and to establish a successful career path in this field.