The primary focus of research in Dr. Lancaster’s laboratory relates to the characterization of the molecular determinants of ovarian cancer development, response to therapy and clinical outcome, with overarching goals to develop personalized medicine strategies for women with advanced stage epithelial ovarian cancer. Dr. Lancaster and colleagues explored the genome-wide changes that underlie ovarian cancer response to therapy and developed a series of gene expression-based biomarkers associated with clinical phenotypes. Specifically, they developed a series of genomic profiles that are predictive of response to platinum, taxanes, topotecan and doxorubicin. These signatures are now subject to prospective observational validation in a 4-year NCI R33-funded study. Additionally, Dr. Lancaster and colleagues have taken advantage of gene array technology to characterize the genome-wide expression changes that drive ovarian cancer chemoresistance. They have identified discrete pathways that can be targeted to increase chemotherapy-induced apoptosis. They focused on characterization of one such pathway (BCL2 antagonist of cell death/BAD-apoptosis) as a biomarker of chemo-response and clinical outcome; identifying a 48-gene expression signature that is associated with ovarian cancer response to platinum-based therapy, and with disease-free/overall survival from ovarian, breast, colon, and brain cancers.