Rare gynecological cancers including uterine sarcomas, vulvar and non-epithelial ovarian cancers, are under-studied diseases and the absence of standardized diagnostic and therapeutic approaches or tailored clinical guidelines led to low survival rates and/or poor quality of life outcomes.
The ROAR project aims at increasing the molecular understanding of these diseases in a multidisciplinary, interinstitutional setting including gynecologic oncologists, medical oncologists, phase I researchers, pathologists, molecular pathologist, research nurses, genetists, bioinformatics, psychologists and patients' advocacy groups.
The project will pursue this aim through the following activities:
- Harmonizing procedures and enabling safe and easy data sharing across all involved institutions; this will be achieved by reviewing the available clinical and molecular data (WP1), establishing an interinstitutional second-opinion board (WP2/Task1), developing a dedicated electronic customized research form (WP2/Task2) and deploying a genomics platform (WP2/Task3).
- Performing comprehensive somatic and transcriptional profiling as well as immunological landscape assessments on high quality annotated samples stored in a biobank dedicated to rare gynecological cancers; this will require systematic and standardized clinical data and biological samples collection (WP3/WP4), standardization of pre-analytical and sequencing procedures (WP5/6). The board will tailor indications and modalities for genomics and liquid biopsy assessments based on clinical features.
- Evaluating the clinical impact of the board on rare gynecological cancers management and, through the evidence gathered, implementing diagnostic and therapeutic strategies; this will include analyzing the activities of the board (WP7/Task 1.1), integrating -omics data in the board report (WP7/Task 1.2), evaluating liquid biopsy role in identifying minimal residual disease post-surgery, disease monitoring over time, capability of capturing tumor heterogeneity at baseline and identifying hot spot actionable molecular alterations. Finally, the evidence gathered from the ROAR project, will allow update of clinical guidelines or provide new recommendations for each rare gynecological cancer included. The results of ROAR will also be disseminated through direct access to the integrated platform developed.