Ovarian cancer causes more deaths in women living in the United States than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. The American Cancer Society’s (ACS) research programs help find answers to critical questions:
How can ovarian cancer be diagnosed early?
How can the risk of developing ovarian cancer be lowered?
Are there more effective treatments?
What could help survivors have a better quality of life?
We continue to fund research to help save more lives in the future.
Alpa Patel, PhD, Lauren Teras, PhD, and other American Cancer Society (ACS) epidemiologists have used data collected from participants in our Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) for several published research projects.
The ACS’s CPS-II Nutrition Cohort is part of the Collaborative Group on Epidemiological Studies of Ovarian Cancer. This group helped establish the increased risk for ovarian cancer in women with excess body weight and the decreased risk of ovarian cancer for women who use oral contraceptives.”
Thanks to CPS-II and CPS-3 participants, we have blood samples to find biomarkers that will identify early signs of ovarian cancer and to find information about risk factors that are hard to capture through questionnaires, such as how to identify inherited genetic mutations that increase a woman’s risk for ovarian cancer.
ACS investigators are testing the blood samples in collaboration with Ovarian Cancer Cohort Consortium (OC3) investigators.
A biomarker that signals the potential, or risk, a person has to develop a disease before they have symptoms. For instance, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is a susceptibility biomarker for heart disease.
The ACS funds scientists who conduct research about ovarian cancer at medical schools, universities, research institutes, and hospitals throughout the United States. We use a rigorous and independent peer review process to select the most innovative research projects proposals to fund.
The grant statistics to the left are as of August 1, 2023.