at the risk of sounding controversial, he says the “use of the birth control pill has probably saved more women from dying from ovarian cancer than all medical interventions, resulting in a 50 per cent reduction in risk.”
the search for a cure: tackling long-term survival of ovarian cancer
alicia tone says that, although there is still no cure for the disease, researchers understand so much more about the different types of ovarian cancer than they did 20 years ago.
“unfortunately, that has not yet translated into improved long-term outcomes for patients, but we’re doing better in the short term for women living disease-free for longer and having better quality of life,” tone says. “now we need to tackle the long-term survival by understanding how we can detect it earlier and further channel treatments to the individual patient. there’s also a lot of work going on to figure out new ways to screen.”
occ has
many projects
in the works, including research that focuses on prevention, diagnosis, novel treatments and survivorship, as well as six clinical trials studying precision medicine.
“the number one uniting factor is that we want to prevent ovarian cancer in as many people as possible while all this other work is going on,” says tone. “these treatments are great in terms of helping people live longer, but if we can avoid [getting it] from the beginning, that is optimal.”
tone encourages those with the disease to undergo genetic testing, which can help with treatment decisions. for instance, if someone with ovarian cancer has the brca1 gene mutation, they are more likely to respond to a very specific type of targeted drugs called
parp inhibitors
.