When your wellbeing is affected by ovarian cancer, this means that your cells have grown abnormally and uncontrolled, and can spread through your bloodstream or your lymph system into the stomach, where it can develop further and form secondary tumours. Nine out of 10 cases of ovarian cancer are of the epithelial variety, affecting the lining of your ovaries. Within epithelial ovarian cancer, the two most common types (out of seven) are serous and endometrioid. In non-epithelial ovarian cancer, which tends to affect younger women, germ cell cancers form from the cells in the ovary that make the eggs.
For the study, Dana-Farber scientists developed a laboratory model that mimics the process by which fallopian tube cells may turn into cancer cells that appear to have come from the ovaries. By demonstrating that this process can happen in the lab, the scientists have given powerful evidence that it does happen in patients, and this throws new weight behind the theory that HGSOC begins, in fact, in the fallopian tubes and not in the ovaries as was previously believed.
Because ovarian tumours don’t often produce any warning symptoms, by the time they have been discovered the ovaries can be so overrun with cancer that adjacent sections of the fallopian tube are obscured, which are difficult to examine under a microscope. Hence, the researchers used tissue from women who had had their fallopian tubes removed, for reasons unrelated to cancer, to establish a model that mirrors the structure and function of normal fallopian tube tissue in the body. This model will ultimately enable researchers to test potential therapies.
According to American Cancer Society, approximately 200,000 women, worldwide, are diagnosed with HGSOC each year, and 115,000 die of it. Ovarian cancer is known as a ‘silent killer’ as it is virtually symptom-less in the early stages. If you do experience symptoms, this can include stomach pain or a bloated feeling that can be confused with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and ovarian cysts and non-cancerous growths also cause the same symptoms as ovarian cancer. You should also look out for signs such as loss of appetite, unexplained weight gain, pain during sex, changes in bowel or bladder habits and, rarely, abnormal vaginal bleeding.