Primary ovarian cancer cells were derived from ascites collected from serous ovarian cancer patients after informed consent and with approval of the Royal Adelaide Hospital Human Ethics Committee as described previously . All primary cells were grown in Advanced RPMI 1640 medium (cat no 12633-020) supplemented with 4 mM L-glutamine, 10% FBS (Sigma Aldrich, St Louis, MO, USA) and antibiotics (100 U penicillin G, 100 μg/ml streptomycin sulfate and 100 μg/ml amphotericin B, Sigma Aldrich). Methods were carried out in accordance with the approved guidelines. The clinicopathological characteristics of the patients whose ascites was used to isolate the primary cells are shown in Supplementary Table 2.