Many ovarian cancer tumours start in other organs then metastasise to the ovary

A new study made by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute just shed more light on ovarian cancer which is in the media because of a landmark decision last week. The Missouri state jury awarded as damages $72 million (AUD$100 million) to the family of Alabama resident Jacqueline Fox.

The jury believed in the accusation of Fox’s family that she got her ovarian cancer from two talc powder products of Johnson & Johnson which she used for feminine hygiene. The study says that at the molecular level, many tumours of ovarian cancer patients started in other organs or cell types, but metastasised to the ovary.

However, in the case of another Johnson’s baby powder and Shower to Shower user, Deana Berg, a biopsy showed that while her ovaries were removed, the cancer cells from her diseased ovaries had spread to Berg’s lymph nodes. The new discovery by Roswell scientists “changes our fundamental understanding of ovarian cancer, but it also underscores how much we have yet to learn about ovarian cancer subtypes and their progression,” says Dr Kunle Odunsi, co-author of the study and deputy director and chair of Gynecologic Oncology at Roswell.

Odunsi credits advances in specialty care and the development of effective first-line chemotherapy for increasing to almost 46 percent from 36 percent the five-year survival rate of women with high-grade serous carcinoma, the most common and deadly type of ovarian cancer. But Jerome Strauss, chair of the committee behind the study, adds that despite the progress in ovarian cancer research over the past few decades, “much remains to be learned.”

Strauss pushes for more study on basic biology of different types of cancers, such as origin, because oncologists would be able to move faster toward advances to prevent, screen, detect early, treat and provide support care. The study confirms the need for women with ovarian cancer to undergo genetic counseling and potential testing to identify other family members are at risk and how to select a suitable therapy, says Odunsi who is also co-director of the Familial Ovarian Cancer Registry.