Critical Clinical Trials: ROSELLA Trial Success Provides Hope for Gynecologic Cancer Patient

When Carmen E. Chumaceiro Villasmil walked into a Miami emergency room on Easter Sunday 2019, she thought she had a kidney stone. What doctors found instead was a 14-centimeter tumor. She was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. It was a 180-degree turn from the life she knew, and it happened in a single afternoon.

Within five days, she was in surgery. Within weeks, she was searching for the right oncologist to guide her through what she knew would be a long road.

A family connection led her to Brian Slomovitz, MD, Director, Gynecologic Oncology. After one visit, Carmen, her husband, and her mother looked at each other in the car and the decision was unanimous — “He’s the one.”

Early on, another provider told her the cancer would likely return within 24 months. It didn’t return for more than six years, a timeline that defied expectations and one Carmen credits to her care team, her faith, and a physician who never let the statistics define her.

“He’s always given me hope. Always,” she says. “Last time, he told me, ‘My purpose is to help you live forever.’ We know that’s not possible. But just him saying that was enough to make me believe I could get through this.”

When her cancer did recur in mid-2025, it was Dr. Slomovitz who kept her grounded. Carmen completed five cycles of chemotherapy and is now on maintenance therapy. As her treatment progresses, there will come a point when her cancer becomes resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy, a clinical turning point that has historically left patients with limited options.

On March 25, 2026, the FDA approved relacorilant (Lifyorli) in combination with nab-paclitaxel for adults with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer, 3.5 months ahead of the agency’s goal date. The approval was based on results from the ROSELLA trial, a global phase 3 study conducted across 117 hospitals in 14 countries. The combination therapy demonstrated a 35% reduced risk of death compared to chemotherapy alone, with median overall survival reaching 16 months versus 11.9 months. It is the first randomized phase 3 study in over a decade to show both progression-free and overall survival benefit in this population.

Mount Sinai Medical Center was one of the top enrolling sites in the world, and Dr. Slomovitz served as a trial investigator and co-authored both of the study’s publications in The Lancet.

For Carmen, the approval is personal. When her cancer does become platinum resistant in the near future, this new combination therapy will offer a treatment pathway that, until last week, did not exist.

She remembers a conversation with Dr. Slomovitz not long ago, when her tumor markers were rising and the uncertainty felt heavy. He told her not to worry, that there were new therapies being studied and that good things were coming. That promise has now materialized into an FDA-approved option.

When asked what she would tell a woman receiving the same diagnosis today, Carmen doesn’t hesitate: “The first thing I would tell her: There is hope, there’s faith, there is medicine. Just look. I’m still here standing. I tell people that medicine is an instrument of God. Doctors are an instrument. Patients need hope.”

The investment in cancer care research is accelerating through the Braman Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Carmen is already looking forward to it. “You feel it,” she says. “They care. They really do. And when you’re going through this, that changes everything.”

To learn more about Gynecologic Cancer Care at Mount Sinai Medical Center, click here, and to learn more about oncology clinical trials, click here