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Ovarian cancer is a tumor that affects the ovaries in women.
Ovaries are the reproductive organs which produce eggs and they also produce hormones.
We're actually learn that ovarian cancer may actually start in the tube adjacent to the
ovary called the fallopian tube; that's the tube that carries the egg from the ovary to
the uterus.
And this is important because as we learn about pre-carcer (ph.) legions or legions
that might lead to ovarian cancer it may give us new strategies for treatment and even new
strategies for prevention.
With ovarian cancer there are many different types.
The most common type is a serus (ph.) or high grade ovarian cancer, but beyond that there
are other types such as mucinous (ph.) ovarian cancer or clear cell ovarian cancer.
And these are important because they have different molecular drivers and they also
respond to different treatments.
Different types respond differently and this can be related to stage or grade or tumor
type and it's very important to understand that the treatment for one person may be different
than from another.
In general when someone is diagnosed with ovarian cancer the treatment generally includes
surgery and chemotherapy.
The surgery is called debulking and we know that maximum surgical debulking generally
yields the best results and this is often followed by chemotherapy.
Chemotherapy generally includes drugs like Paclitaxel (ph.) or Carboplatin (ph.) or Sisplatin
(ph.).
There are some differences in the way the drugs are given, for example, sometimes they
may be given on a weekly schedule or they may be given through a port and be given directly
into the abdomen.
There are certain tumor types that don't require these drugs and that depends on the initial
diagnosis.
I think one of the exciting recent advances is that we're learning to characterize ovarian
cancer not how it looks under the microscope but are doing more molecular profiling or
looking at molecular changes which may make tumors respond to different treatments or
behave in a certain way.
So as we learn more about which tumors respond to which drugs we can develop a more personalized
approach and a patient would have a higher chance of having a response.
Other new approaches for women with ovarian cancer come in the field of immunology.
So this is the idea that you can use the immune system to attack tumors, much in the way it
treats infections, for example.
There are new data with drugs called checkpoint inhibitors.
These are drugs that actually turn on the immune system when applied.
There's also been recent information about some vaccine or other immunotherapy strategies.
And I think in general this area of research is very interesting and is promising .
If someone is looking for additional information beyond their health care team I think the
internet has some good sources.
Some websites are affiliated with certain hospitals or medical centers.
I think standard good resources are the Cancer.gov website and the Clinicaltrials.gov website
which is overseen by the National Cancer Institute and then there's the Cancer.Net website which
is overseen by the American Society for Clinical Oncology.
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