There are more than 27,000 new cases of ovarian cancer diagnosed in America each year and 13,000 of those cases prove to be terminal.
Ovarian cancer causes more deaths than any other reproductive organ cancer.
The chances of survival are better if this cancer is found before it has spread outside the ovary. One of the grants received by the University of Nebraska Medical Center during the first six months of 1999 enables UNMC to join researchers in the United States, Canada, South America and Europe in a new clinical study in the fight against ovarian cancer. The fact is that within the last 10 years, the development of new therapeutic agents has doubled the life expectancy for advanced cases of ovarian cancer from 9 months to 18 months or more. But each time the disease comes out of remission, it is meaner and tougher, and we have less options to offer the patient. The p53 gene is a protein in normal cells that controls cell division.