This week's artwork was donated by Sarah, a pediatric cancer patient who received treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia .
Ovarian cancer kills more American women each year than all other gynecologic malignancies combined.
Because the disease is essentially asymptomatic in its early stages, and because no effective screening strategies exist, about three-fourths of cases are not diagnosed until after the disease has spread beyond the ovaries. A clear inverse relationship has been demonstrated between the amount of residual tumor following initial surgery and survival. For patients who fail to obtain a complete response, or who relapse, no standard curative treatment regimen exists. There is considerable evidence, both in vitro and in vivo, that human ovarian cancer has a steep dose response curve for many of the active chemotherapeutic agents. These observations have heightened interest in the use of dose-intensive regimens for treatment of the disease.