Dr. Denise Connolly is an Assistant Professor and Member of the Women’s Cancer Program at the Fox Chase Cancer Centre in Philadelphia, USA. Her research is focused on the development, refinement and analysis of mouse models of epithelial ovarian cancer. Mouse models of human cancer provide valuable tools to identify and study the underlying causes of tumor initiation and progression and identify genetic and immune modifiers important in the disease process. These models also provide means to evaluate strategies for prevention, detection and treatment of disease. She has developed the first heritable model of ovarian cancer in mice and utilizes it to identify additional molecular alterations that may contribute to disease, to develop in vivo imaging strategies and to evaluate potential therapeutic agents. Dr. Connolly will present her findings in Symposium III: Models of Ovarian Cancer for Mechanistic and Therapeutic Studies.