Radiofolate as a potential therapy for treating ovarian cancer
- Manja Gideon Foundation
- Mar 25
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 2
The team, led by research group leader Prof. Dr. Cristina Müller at the Center for Radiopharmaceutical Sciences (CRS) of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), is conducting research on new radionuclide therapies, including for metastatic ovarian cancer.
March 10, 2025
Villigen, PSI. Radiopharmaceuticals act on tumor cells primarily through the radiation of radionuclides, which cause damage to the DNA of cancer cells and thus stop their growth. They are administered when metastasis has already occurred and the patient can no longer receive external radiation.
Prof. Cristina Müller has been working on the concept of targeted radionuclide therapy for around 20 years and her research is focused on types of cancer that contain folate receptors. She is convinced that folate radioconjugates have a lot of potential for clinical translation. In simple terms, the receptors on the surface of a cancer cell become the "docking stations" for targeted cancer therapies. Radioactive molecules – so-called folate radioconjugates – can thus accumulate on the receptors and kill the cancer cell.
The hope is that, in the future, folate radioconjugates can be increasingly used for the targeted radiation therapy of tumor cells. Radiopharmaceuticals act on tumor cells through the radiation of radionuclides, which damage the cancer cell’s DNA. As with all cancer therapies, it is possible that the cancer cells become resistant and learn to repair themselves. Therefore, strategies are needed to develop and implement effective combination therapies.
Targeted radionuclide therapy has been used mostly for metastatic prostate cancer or neuroendocrine tumors. Since a variety of cancer types have folate receptors, the development of cancer-specific folate radioconjugates is extremely important. ‘In the future it could be used in particular to treat patients with gynecological cancers – especially ovarian cancer,’ says Prof. Cristina Müller. Such therapeutic concepts can help people live longer and alleviate disease-related symptoms, such as pain.
Dr. Ana Katrina Mapanao has also been working in this field of research for the past three years. She is currently doing in-vitro testing of the therapeutic efficacy of a radioactively labelled folate radioconjugate in combination with PARP inhibitors for the treatment of ovarian cancer. PARP inhibitors are drugs that block cancer cells from repairing damages to their DNA and can therefore enhance the efficacy of radiation therapy.
The results of her project will shed light on the potential efficacy of radiopharmaceuticals combined with PARP inhibitors in treating ovarian cancer.
The Manja Gideon Foundation is supporting Dr. Ana Katrina Mapanao’s work with a research grant. Recently, at the invitation of Prof. Cristina Müller, representatives of the Manja Gideon Foundation visited the lab at the Paul Scherrer Institute where they got a closer look at the research being conducted.
Dr. Ana Katrina Mapanao is head of the project, which receives assistance from Prof. Dr. Cristina Müller (group leader at the CRS/PSI), Fan Sozzi-Guo (group lab technician) and Benjamin Hunkeler, a PhD student who also works on the group’s folate project.
