Growing up in St. Louis, Jennifer Karlow developed a love of science, engaged by her father, an aerospace engineer. She learned the rudiments of chemistry at a young age when he used coins to simulate electron orbits. A series of science projects in school drew her in further, filling her with the thrill of logically piecing together information about the world around her.
The passion grew over the years as she realized how much science had to offer humanity. After seven years of specialized schooling, Dr. Jennifer Karlow’s career path became clear.
“My extended family has been greatly affected by breast and ovarian cancer,” she said in a recent interview with wtatennis.com. “So I have been naturally motivated to study these types of malignancies.”
As part of the Hologic WTA Tour’s ACEing Cancer program, which funds research and other women’s cancer initiatives, each year a person from its professional family who was afflicted with cancer is honored -- and research is directed toward curing that particular cancer type.
Last year’s selectee was Jeanne Evert Dubin, a former World No.1 junior, a respected coach and the sister of Chris Evert. She died in 2020 at the age of 62 of ovarian cancer.
With recommendations from the American Cancer Association, a diverse committee under the auspices of the WTA Foundation vetted a number of candidates. Members included the WTA’s Ann Austin, Amy Binder, Laura Ceccarelli, Jan Soderstrom, two-time Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka and Robert Kinas of Cancer Research Racquet.
Dr. Karlow, currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, was their choice. In layman’s terms, she’s focused on understanding ovarian cancer developments to identify markers of early tumors and to devise effective therapies.
Jeanne Evert Dubin has already been an inspiration in the fight against cancer -- to her sister.
Afterward, a genetic test revealed that Chris Evert shared the same BRCA1 gene variant with her sister. That led to a checkup, which discovered stage 1C ovarian cancer. After treatment, the 18-time major champion announced in January she was cancer free.
“I held my breath while I waited for my pathology results,” Evert wrote in an ESPN.com story. “Luckily, the report came back clean and clear.
“My sister’s journey saved my life, and I hope by sharing mine, I just might save somebody else’s.”
Getting with the program
When Karlow was in high school, a classmate was undergoing cancer treatment. Within a year, before graduating, she was dead.
“It always seemed unfair to me that someone so innocent could be plagued with such a tremendous burden,” Karlow said. “Growing up, I always thought doctors knew everything there was to know about the human body -- that there was nothing left to be discovered.
“But the more I learned about biology, the more I understood that so much was left to be unearthed. Ultimately, I just remember thinking in high school that if I had cancer, I’d want every person available to be working on finding a cure, and that has stuck with me ever since.”
And so, she matriculated to Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, where she majored in biology and minored in mathematical biology. But after her first two years, Karlow grew mildly discouraged that so much of the learning was by rote. She nearly veered into the field of physics, but a summer program, which matched her and a math major with biology and math professors -- they studied the effect of elevated CO 2 on phosphorus uptake in bean plants -- introduced her to the power of using computational tools to address biological questions.
Programming, she discovered, was a way to combine her two passions of biology with math.
“I remember having this “aha” moment during the program. I’d always known what I wanted to study [cancer], and now I knew how I wanted to study it,” Karlow said. “I fell in love with the pure logic of programming and never looked back.”
She earned her Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, working in the lab of Dr. Ting Wang toward her thesis of understanding how cells progress into metastasis.
Although it was not the focus of her thesis, a large section of the lab studied transposable elements (TEs) -- vast portions of the genome, which were once considered “junk DNA.” These were typically thrown out of analyses because they were difficult to track, but as computational tools have advanced, researchers are able to better pinpoint where these sequences are coming from and begin to understand how they are contributing to cancer.
This is what led Karlow to Dana-Farber and the lab of Dr. Kathleen Burns, institute's chief of pathology. Her first year was supported by a National Institutes of Health T32 training grant through Harvard Genetics and now the significant grant from the WTA Tour from 2022 and a fellowship from the American Cancer Society will allow her work to continue.
Karlow and others are studying the contribution of LINE-1, the portion of the genome once thought of as unimportant, to the formation and progression of ovarian cancer.
Another relatively recent development: The origin of the most dangerous forms of gynecological cancer has been traced to the fallopian tubes. Previously, it was thought to begin in the ovaries themselves.
“This discovery has been a major paradigm shift in how the field is thinking about the origins of ovarian cancer,” Dr. Karlow said. “It means that by the time the cancer is in the ovaries it has already moved from where the cell originated. It also means that there is hope for therapeutic benefit from looking at the cancer in a new way; for example researchers are assessing the benefit of opportunistic removal of fallopian tubes in reducing ovarian cancer risk.”
Karlow spends most of her time as a computational biologist analyzing sequencing data. She frequently writes code to process large data files, looking for patterns in the DNA or RNA sequence that will shed some light on what parts of the genome might be going wrong and promoting cancer.
One of the most rewarding aspects of working in the lab is the collaboration and comradery in play.
“Each person has his or her own perspective and expertise” she said, “and that brings new ideas and information to solving problems.”
Opening new avenues
Karlow has been a team player from her early days in St. Louis. She played softball through eighth grade, swam and ran cross country and track in high school. She’s also been playing volleyball since third grade, through high school and college. Today she’s a member of two competitive recreational teams.
She initially submitted her research proposal to the American Cancer Society and was thrilled when they told her it would be funded -- and that the WTA and the Cancer Research Racquet had a special interest in funding her work.
Ask Karlow what she wants to achieve and this is what she says:
“I hope that through the support offered by this grant that we can help the field take another step -- or steps -- toward better understanding the biological underpinnings of ovarian cancer initiation and progression. My hope is that through studying the basic biology of the disease, we will open new avenues of unexplored therapeutics, which will help generations of future cancer patients.”
Since obtaining the grant, Karlow said she’s begun to follow the sport of professional tennis. She’s been invited to the upcoming GNP Seguro WTA Finals in Cancun, where Chris Evert will serve as an ambassador.
“After learning of her personal connection with ovarian cancer,” she said, “I am drawn to follow athletes in the sport, particularly women, who have shown great enthusiasm for ovarian cancer research.”
