The Ovarian Cancer Consortium for Long-Term Survival - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA

study

 The Consortium for Long-Term Survival, led by the Mass General Cancer Center and funded by the Department of Defense, is a research group seeking long-term survivors of ovarian cancer. If you are a 8 year or more stage III or stage IV ovarian cancer survivor, your participation can help to improve the treatment, survival, and survivorship of all women.

• If you would like more information about this research program, click here to contact Giulia Fulci, Project Co-Ordinator
• To find out about other research at the Birrer Labaratory, click here

Finding the Key to Long-Term Survival

Although ovarian cancer is not a common cancer in women in the US, it ranks among the top causes of cancer death in women. Despite this, there are some patients who are long-term cancer survivors. We would like to better understand the reasons why some patients do better than others, in term of both their biology and their quality of life.
We now have the technological tools to try to unlock the reasons why some women do much better than others who face advanced ovarian cancer. We hope to find the key to long-term survival.
With your help, we want to better define five aspects of ovarian cancer in long-term survivors of the condition:

1. The ability of their tumor cells to grow and survive, even after surgery
2. Just how capable these tumors are to grow their own blood supply channels
3. How these cancers interact and invade surrounding structures
4. How women coped with their cancer in the past and in the present
5. What their quality of life is like now, compared to how it was in various times in their cancer journey

It may be that differences in these five factors have an influence on a woman’s ability to survive and thrive after diagnosis. Our hope is to identify a biologic, molecular, and psychosocial pattern that can predict long-term survival in hopes that their lessons can be learned by all women with ovarian cancer.
If you would like more information about this research program, click here to contact Giulia Fulci, Project Co-Ordinator.