Novel non-cytotoxic therapy in ovarian cancer: current status and future prospects.

Although significant improvements in standard therapy for ovarian carcinoma have been made over the past decade, current treatment is limited by the development of resistance to cytotoxic chemotherapy, and most women ultimately die of the disease. New knowledge of the biology of ovarian cancer has led to the identification of potential molecular targets that are differentially expressed in normal cells versus cancer cells, and advances in pharmacology have led to the development of novel agents that work differently from traditional cytotoxic chemotherapy by exploiting these targets. Many of these agents are being evaluated in clinical trials. This article discusses molecular targets that are important in ovarian carcinoma, including angiogenesis, tyrosine kinases, mitogen-activated protein kinases, and phosphatidylinositol-like kinases such as mammalian target of rapamycin, and the proteosome. This article reviews novel non-cytotoxic agents that target these pathways and are currently being evaluated in ovarian carcinoma treatment.