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 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.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) employs a staff of full-time researchers and funds scientists across the United States who relentlessly search for answers to help us better understand cancer, including ovarian cancer. Here are some highlights of their work.
“Ovarian cancer is very hard to detect, but if it can be caught early, it is much easier to treat. My lab found that carbon nanotubes -- tiny fluorescent particles -- can respond to proteins in the blood and give a diverse set of signals. We used machine learning algorithms to make sense of these signals. We found that our nanosensors can be used to detect ovarian cancer better than conventional markers, and they may be able to be adapted to detect many other cancers.” –Daniel Heller, PhD
See the highlight about Dr. Heller's published study.
“About 75% of epithelial ovarian cancers are high-grade serous carcinomas. These cancers are complex and variable, making them difficult to treat. In earlier studies, my lab learned that blocking the protein USP13 causes ovarian cancer cells to die and the growth of tumors to dramatically slow. So we developed a new mouse model to allow us to better study the role of USP13 protein in epithelial ovarian cancer.
“USP13 is barely present in a non-cancerous ovary or fallopian tube, but it’s present at high levels in ovarian cancers—and high levels of USP13 are linked with poor survival. With our mouse model, we demonstrated that USP13 enhances the development, growth, and spread of high-grade epithelial ovarian cancers. In the future, we hope to develop a specific USP13 inhibitor to treat ovarian tumors with high level of USP13. We also hope to identify and learn about other targets to overcome metastasis and chemotherapy resistance in these deadly ovarian tumors.” —Cecil Han, PhD
See the highlight about Dr. Han's published study.
“We still have a lot to learn about the fallopian tube and its role in ovarian cancer development and, potentially, prevention. We used a new technology to profile the genes expressed in individual cells in the fallopian tube to identify if a specific subset of cells are the likely cells-of-origin for the most common subtype of ovarian tumors, high-grade serous epithelial cancers.
”We found a lot of heterogeneity within the epithelium of the fallopian tube, including a population of cells that share molecular features with advanced tumors, suggesting they may be the main cell precursors of high-grade serous tumors.
“Importantly, our results were consistent with another study that was recently published by the Ahmed laboratory in the UK. Our hope is that in the long-term we can use these data to develop new strategies for cancer prevention or early detection.” —Kate Lawrenson, PhD
See the highlight about Dr. Lawrenson's published study.
“Researchers have explored nanoparticles as a vehicle to deliver anti-cancer drugs to solid tumors. They’re mostly injected intravenously, and they’re able to accumulate in tumors by taking advantage of the leakiness of the blood vessels surrounding the tumors. However, typically less than 1% of an injected dose reaches the tumors.
“To treat ovarian tumors growing in the abdominal space in mice, my lab team administered nanoparticles directly into this cavity and discovered that the majority of the nanoparticles ended up on the tumor’s surface because of the way they interacted with the structures that surround the tumor cells, called the extracellular matrix. We demonstrated that collagen plays a major role in facilitating this interaction.” —Xiuling Lu, PhD
The American Cancer Society funds scientists who conduct research about 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 American Cancer Society's Population Science department includes scientists who work with our large, on-going cancer prevention studies (CPS), such as CPS-II and CPS-3.
Alpa Patel, PhD, Lauren Teras, PhD, and other American Cancer Society (ACS) epidemiologists have used data collected in our Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) for several published research projects. Here are some of their findings.
Of women in the CPS-II study:
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.
Using blood samples collected from CPS-II and CPS-3, ACS investigators are collaborating with Ovarian Cancer Cohort Consortium (OC3) investigators to find biomarkers that identify early signs of ovarian cancer and to find information about risk factors that is hard to capture through questionnaires.
ACS epidemiologists also actively study how to identify inherited genetic mutations that increase a woman’s risk for ovarian cancer and novel work on biomarkers for early detection of ovarian cancer.
Each year, the American Cancer Society (ACS) Surveillance & Health Equity Science team publishes the latest data on cancer trends for the United States, including ovarian cancers, as part of its Cancer Statistics report in the ACS journal, CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. This report is accompanied by an educational publication, Cancer Facts & Figures report.
These publications provide detailed analyses and estimates of cancer incidence, survival, and mortality trends in the US. They also have the latest information on risk factors, early detection, treatment, and current research.
2022 Statistics for ovarian cancer in the US include:
Women with a higher risk of ovarian cancer include those with a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
Other medical conditions and characteristics associated with a risk for developing ovarian cancer are a personal history of:
Find more statistics about ovarian cancer on the Cancer Statistics Center:
Use the analysis tool in the drop-down menu to see any of these statistics in comparison to other types of cancer.