There are around 7,400 new ovarian cancer cases in the UK every year, and this cancer type is the 6th most common cause of cancer mortality in females in the UK. There is no screening technique, and most patients (~60%) present with advanced disease because symptoms are not easy to recognise or distinguish from other, less serious conditions, often leading to late or mis‑diagnosis. Ovarian cancer survival is improving in the UK and has almost doubled in the last 40 years, and when diagnosed at its earliest stage, 93% of people with ovarian cancer will survive their disease for five years or more. Sadly, only 13% of people survive ovarian cancer when it is diagnosed at the latest stage. Therefore, there is a great need to develop new therapies for this disease, based upon greater understanding of its biology.
Image credit: NIMR, Francis Crick Institute. CC BY-NC