Why Ovarian Cancer Resists Hormone Therapy

The Philadelphia Inquirer recently featured Wistar’s Dr. Maureen Murphy in a story exploring why ovarian cancer remains resistant to hormone therapy. Dr. Murphy’s lab focuses on p53—often called the “guardian of the genome”—our body’s primary defense against cancer. This gene is the most frequently mutated in human cancers, and Murphy’s team studies its genetic variants to understand their impact. In her latest research, Dr. Murphy discovered that when p53 is mutated, it disrupts estrogen signaling. This interference explains why hormone therapy fails in ovarian cancer, even when tumors have the appropriate hormone receptors. Here’s the full story.