This is a very good question. The short answer is “maybe”. However, the first step for any patient is to sign consent for the Mayo Clinic ovarian cancer tissue repository PRIOR to surgery. This is key. With this, the answer is “maybe”. Without this, the answer is “no”. For this reason, and countless others, I would encourage any willing patient to participate in the repository if approached by the team. There is one caveat. The challenge with trying to make an Ovatar from a tumor that has already been exposed to chemotherapy is that it can be more difficult to grow in the lab. It is essentially ‘crippled’ from the chemo, which is good for the patient, but bad for the Ovatar. That said, if you signed consent, we will make the attempt.

Alex, thank you very much for the reply.<br />