It’s called a “silent killer” because it doesn’t announce its presence. There is no chest pain or difficulty breathing like there is with lung cancer. You won’t have mood swings or nausea like you might with brain cancer. The most noticeable early symptoms of ovarian cancer might be as simple as bloating or swelling – symptoms that are typically associated with kidney disease. It is because of the lack of early warning signs, coupled with the fact that there are still no effective early detection techniques that makes ovarian cancer the fifth leading cause of cancer death in women (after lung and bronchus, breast, colorectal, and pancreatic cancers).
In a few short weeks, the world will be painted pink for breast cancer awareness month. But for the next 20 days, break out your teal, because it’s ovarian cancer awareness month.
At the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, researchers in the Penn Ovarian Cancer Research Center (POCRC) have made finding a method for early detection a top research and clinical priority. Through the development of three major research programs, Penn researchers are working toward their goals of identifying new detection methods, developing new prevention approaches and therapies, and improving the quality of life for women with ovarian cancer.
“This is an exciting time in medicine,” said Mark Morgan, MD, chief of Gynecologic Oncology. “Discoveries are being made that are changing the course of disease treatments like no other time in history. But, there’s still a lot of work to be done. These patients deserve better detection solutions. Breast cancer research has come a long way in recent years, and we’re hopeful that with the same support and awareness, we will see similar success in ovarian cancer research.”
The American Cancer Society estimates that this year, more than 20,000 women will receive a new diagnosis of ovarian cancer, and more than 14,000 will die from the disease. While the rate at which women are newly diagnosed with ovarian cancer has been falling over the past 20 years, it still accounts for more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. When ovarian cancer is found in its early stages, treatment is most effective, but it has an overall five-year survival rate of only 44 percent due to the difficulty with early diagnosis. Comparatively, more than 80 percent of women survive breast cancer, in large part because of early detection capabilities.
One of the hallmark initiatives of the POCRC is the Early Detection and Prevention Program. Formed by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, the program seeks to uncover new early detection methods, including the development of new blood tests, new imaging tools and other innovative techniques to detect ovarian cancer early, such as Penn Medicine’s partnership with Penn Vet’s Working Dog Center, in which dogs are being trained to “sniff out” ovarian caner early.
“Cancer cells emit compounds that have a distinct smell in the earliest stages of the disease, when cells are dividing,” said Janos Tanyi, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Penn Medicine's leader in the study. “We believe that, like dogs that sniff out drugs, these dogs can be trained to catch ovarian cancer tumors in the early stages when the cells are changing," he said.
The Center’s initiative also focuses on reducing the occurrence of ovarian cancer through the development of prevention methods. These include identification of risk factors, such as patients who may be at-risk for carrying BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations that can cause breast and ovarian cancer.
A recent study published in the journal Behavioral Medicine found that 75 percent of women at high risk for BRCA mutations – based on family history – were aware that the mutations increased their risk of breast cancers, but were unaware that the genetic mutations also increased their chance of ovarian cancer. The reality is that the at-risk women have a lifetime risk of up to 40 percent (BRCA1) or 20 percent (BRCA2) of developing ovarian cancer, and are more likely to die of ovarian cancer than breast cancer in the absence of prevention. Working together with the Cancer Risk Evaluation Program and the Rena Rowan Breast Program, the Early Detection & Prevention Program addresses ovarian cancer specific issues in these women.
Photo caption: Mark Morgan, MD, (left) and Janos Tanyi, MD