Current and future developments in screening for ovarian cancer.
Over 90% of women diagnosed with localized ovarian cancer survive at least 5 years, but because the disease is often advanced at diagnosis, only half of patients survive that long. Currently, screening is only recommended for women with a strong family history of the disease, for whom prophylactic surgery is appropriate once childbearing is complete. Screening is not recommended for the general population since currently available screening tests seldom detect curable tumors, and often lead to unnecessary surgery. New markers are under investigation that may signal disease earlier and be useful in a marker panel to select women for imaging and/or surgery. A clinical challenge is that definitive diagnosis requires major abdominal surgery, and screening tests often detect benign ovarian conditions. A challenge for translational research in biomarkers for early detection is that access is needed to preclinical blood samples, obtained some months prior to diagnosis, in order to determine if candidate markers can detect disease prior to onset of symptoms.
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, 1100 Fairview Avenue North, M2-B230 Seattle, WA 98109, USA. nurban@fhcrc.org.
Nicole
N
Urban
Charles
C
Drescher