Daniel Matson, MD, PhD

Uterine serous carcinoma (USC) is a severe type of cancer that affects older women and is responsible for 40% of deaths from uterine cancer. Many women with USC have advanced cancer at diagnosis and must be treated with toxic chemotherapy and radiation. However, over half of women with this cancer initially only have a tumor in their uterus. Surgery can remove the tumor from the uterus. However, 1 in 4 women have their cancer return after surgery. Right now, doctors cannot identify which women will have their cancer return after surgery, and so usually all women receive toxic treatments after surgery to help prevent their cancer from coming back. If doctors could identify which women with this cancer will have their tumors come back after surgery, they could only give therapy to women who are likely to have their cancer return. At the same time, women who are not likely to have their cancer return could just be followed by their doctor and would not need toxic treatments. This would represent a major advancement. We have found a marker named GATA2 that can predict which women with this cancer will have their cancer return. Our proposal will figure out why this marker predicts cancer recurrence and support separate clinical trials to test whether we can spare many women with this cancer from chemotherapy. Our goal is to bring about the first real improvement in care for women with USC over the last 30 years.