O.A.K. In the News

May 21, 2008, President Signs Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act

March 2008, Ovarian Cancer In The News

February 27, 2008, Women of Distinction to bestow 1st posthumous award (the Late Dr. Lillian Yeager - board member)

February 8, 2008, UK program offers cancer test for Kentucky women

November 14, 2007, 'My only hope', Volunteers line up for Kanzius' cancer treatment

September 17, 2007, Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky Celebrates Life

September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month -- HELP SAVE LIVES -- Please go to http://new.PetitionOnline.com/ovca2007/petition.html and sign the Ovarian Cancer Awareness Postage Stamp Petition; and ask your email friends to do likewise!

September 1, 2007, New ovarian cancer online health and wellness community for people living with ovarian cancer and their caregivers

July 16, 2007, Inflammatory Breast Cancer - another SILENT killer (Video)

August 4, 2007, Ovarian Cancer: What All Women Need to Know

June 18, 2007, Derby events raise more than $230,000 for charity

May 17, 2007, Living with cancer

May 10, 2007, Ovarian cancer in spotlight

May 9, 2007, Blue Hydrangea Tea Party to benefit OAK

April 9, 2007, One-third get poor ovarian cancer treatment

March 2, 2007, Easton girl, 6, recovering from ovarian cancer

December 29, 2006, New Alliance Website on Ovarian Cancer and Clinical Trials

December 12, 2006, Johanna's Law Passes Congress!

September 27, 2006, O.A.K Adds a New Support Group @ The James Graham Brown Cancer Center

September 21, 2006, O.A.K & Learning About Cancer

July 27, 2006, GCF 2006 GCAM Tool Kit

Women stricken with this syndrome - caused by genetic mutations in the Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1) gene or Breast Cancer 2 (BRCA2) gene - have an 80 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and a 20 to 40 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer (with a mutation in the BRCA1 gene) or a 10 to 20 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer (with a mutation in the BRCA2 gene).

These statistics may sound bleak; however, options are available for women who are considered high risk due to family history or positive genetic testing. These options include: clinical monitoring (mammograms, a blood test, pelvic exams and ultrasound), medication, life-style changes and preventative surgery.

The link between ovarian cancer and breast cancer is quite profound. We urge you, on behalf of GCF, to highlight this important link during GCAM, and once again during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

We would be remiss if we did not highlight a major advance in cancer prevention that should be part of our September observance. The first vaccine for a cancer-cervical cancer-was recently approved by the FDA. GCF and SGO have an aggressive education agenda aimed at speeding widespread adoption of the vaccine program. For more information, visit GCF's National Cervical Cancer Public Education Campaign Web site at www.cervicalcancercampaign.org. Also, to review SGO's position statement on the cervical cancer vaccine, log onto the SGO Web site at www.sgo.org.

As always, thank you for your efforts to educate women about gynecologic cancers during GCAM and the remainder of the year.

Sincerely,

Karl C. Podratz, MD, PhD
Bobbie S. Gostout, MD

Advisory Board Member, Cheri Hauber in Today's Woman Magazine

Remembering Dr. Lillian Yeager, O.A.K. Board Member

please see links below:
Courier Journal
News Tribune
WHAS Video
WHAS Story

May 23, 2006, Cancer Vaccine Shows Promise in Mice:
View article

Ovarian Cancer National Alliance’s 9th Annual Conference in Washington DC, September 6-8, 2006

We are pleased to announce registration for the Ovarian Cancer National Alliance’s 9th Annual Conference in Washington DC, September 6-8, 2006 is now open! Our conference theme this year is “Turn UP the Volume: Raise Your Voice for Change” and will include Capitol Hill Ovarian Cancer Survivors Day, A Clinical Trials Forum, Partner Member Leadership Summit and fantastic programming in our core mission of Education, Awareness and Advocacy.

Please click here to visit our Conference Web site: www.ovariancancer.org/conference

March 9, 2006, Protect the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense

Dear OCAN members and advocates,

This month we have an important and easy opportunity for ovarian cancer advocates to take action and make a difference for ovarian cancer. Please read about how you can help protect the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at the Department of Defense. Just follow the links to the Alliance website to take action and contact your Congress members.  Taking action makes a difference and takes less than 5 minutes of your time.

Ask Your Elected Officials to Sign the “Dear Colleague” Letter on Research Funding

Issue background: Every year we have to fight to secure funding for the Ovarian Cancer Research Program at Department of Defense (DoD). We are asking for $15 million for the program in Fiscal Year (FY) 2007. This much-needed and long-pursued $5 million increase was granted by the House of Representatives last year, but the Senate provided only $10 million. In the end, the final funding bill unfortunately reflected the Senate allocation.

Congressional Status: Congressional Champions of the cancer community are circulating a “Dear Colleague” Letter to their fellow lawmakers on behalf of the ovarian, breast and prostate cancer DoD research programs. Members of Congress in both the House and the Senate can pledge their support by signing this letter, but likely will not do so unless they are requested to do so by their constituents. The House letter is open this week and the Senate letter will open the third week of March. You will receive another e-mail alert when the Senate letter opens. Take Action: Call or write your Senators and Representative and tell them to sign the DoD Cancer Research Programs’ “Dear Colleague” letter. All the information and details are available at www.ovariancancer.org/action.

Thank you for taking action to support ovarian cancer research and legislation that support our national battle against ovarian cancer. Remember you can review issue briefs on all Action Alerts and the federal budget process at the Alliance’s Legislative Action Center www.ovariancancer.org/advocacy. Please share this e-mail with your friends, family and group members. Feel free to contact the Alliance with any questions at advocacy@ovariancancer.org or 202-331-1332.

Sincerely, Elizabeth Denlinger

January 5, 2006, $10 million dollars to the Ovarian Cancer Research Program

1) President Bush signed the Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations Act authorizing an additional $10 million dollars to the Ovarian Cancer Research Program. Last year the FY 2005 DoD Appropriation Act provided $10 million for the DoD OCRP. The staff members of the Ovarian Cancer Research Program are preparing the final details of new funding opportunities for ovarian cancer research to be released within the next two months.

2) The CDMRP website, http://cdmrp.army.mil , has been posting short summaries of research accomplishments from the Ovarian Cancer Research Program. In 2005 titles of these research highlights were:

• HOXA9, HOXA10, and HOXA11 as molecular markers and therapeutic targets in ovarian cancer
• Mutant Endostatin: Promising Antiangiogenic Therapeutic Agent for Ovarian Cancer
• Anti-Angiogenic Role of Dendritic Cells in Ovarian Cancer
• Novel Serum Biomarkers for the Detection of Ovarian Cancer
• Squalamine and Cisplatin: Potential Ovarian Cancer Therapeutic Agents

January 4, 2006, NCI Issues Clinical Announcement for Preferred Method of Treatment for Advanced Ovarian Cancer

View details in the 3 links below:
1) NCI Clinical Anouncement
2) OVARIAN CANCER NATIONAL ALLIANCE Announcement
3) NIH Press Release

January 4, 2006, Oprah switching to Green Tea

click to view at http://bzzzbb.info/rtrd.asp?ID=1952&e=199934&l=101&em=lyeager@ius.edu

September 9, 2005, Business First, OAK raises $17,600 at Toast to Life event at Olmsted

click to view a copy of the story

August 31, 2005, CourierJournal.com, Dinner honors cancer survivors

click to view the story at CourierJournal.COM

August 25, 2005, WHAS.COM, Group battles silent killer

click to view the story at WHAS.COM

August 22, 2005, MSNBC, Women often spot ovarian cancer signs early Many women with ovarian cancer complained of symptoms up to a year before diagnosis, but their doctors did not order the right tests for the fast-growing tumor until later. Learn more at MSNBC

August 17, 2005, Norton Healthcare, Get Healthy!

See page 4 and 5 in the following link to view the article, Get Healthy! September/October 2005

July 27, 2005, Kentucky Derby Festival Press Office, $31,000 raised through Meijer Derby Festival races

Team Force raised money for Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky

This year’s Meijer Derby Festival Marathon/miniMarathon helped participating runners raise more than $31,000 for seven designated Official Charities. The Derby Festival in 2005 implemented a new charity module on its race website – www.derbyfestivalmarathon.com. – that allowed runners to more easily navigate the process of designating a particular charity for fund-raising. Runners were able to set a fund-raising goal online, as well as email potential donors, keep track of donations and send “thank-you” responses.

The Derby Festival designated seven Official Charities of the Meijer Derby Festival Marathon/miniMarathon: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Dream Factory of Louisville, Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Visually Impaired Preschool Services and the WHAS Crusade for Children.

The Kentucky Derby Festival annually helps raise more than $200,000 for charitable causes and its new race online charity module proved to be a successful tool for runners seeking to not only give of themselves physically, but give to others as well.

2004 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Immunological treatment of ovarian cancer

Development of immunological treatments for ovarian cancer has not been a conspicuous success story over the past few years. Only a handful of clinical trials have reported immunological responses, and correlation with clinical benefit has been elusive. Several recent studies presented in this review, however, point to a revival of optimism for the development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies. More...

June 6, 2005, Courier Journal (by Scheri Smith), Ovarian cancer survivors celebrate

Star Prestigiacomo of Germantown knew nothing about ovarian cancer until it invaded her life four years ago.

Prestigiacomo said she was stunned when doctors found a football-sized tumor in one of her ovaries.

"I wasn't even sick," she said. "I never thought anything about it."

Prestigiacomo said she found peace and learned about the disease as a member of Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky, a support group for cancer patients and their families.

The group, a nonprofit organization with an office in Norton Suburban Hospital, celebrated yesterday at Des Pres Park, on Lowe Road near Taylorsville Road, with a picnic for cancer survivors.

Prestigiacomo and other survivors shared their stories with friends and family at the picnic, which drew about 50 people.

Jill Doimer of the Eastwood area, a co-founder of the group, said that giving women support when they are found to have cancer has been shown to improve their lives.

"Statistics say that if you're involved in a support group, then you have a better quality of life," Doimer said. "We have to keep this thing going because we've all been touched by it."

And getting women to talk about the disease is one of the best ways to create awareness, said SuzAnne Caraway, a member of the group's board. Caraway, who lives near Springhurst and whose mother has had more than 200 treatments for the disease, said that many women don't realize that they aren't being tested for ovarian cancer during their annual gynecological exams.

"I think that's the biggest farce," she said. "They think everything's fine, but it's not."

According to the group's Web site, ovarian cancer, the deadliest of the gynecologic cancers, is the fifth-leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women. Ovarian cancer occurs in 1 out of 58 women, according to the American Cancer Society.

Symptoms of the disease include abdominal pressure, bloating, nausea, indigestion, constipation, diarrhea, frequent urination, abnormal bleeding, unusual fatigue, unexplained changes in weight and shortness of breath.

Caraway's mother, DiAnne Estes, who lives near Brownsboro Road, said that many times women just don't think ovarian cancer is something they should be concerned with. Estes, whose cancer has been in remission for a couple of years, said she's not embarrassed to tell other women that the disease even caused her to have a colostomy bag for a time.

"It's not a pretty picture," she said. "People need to know that it can happen to them."

But belonging to the support group and educating others isn't always "a downer," Estes said.

The best advice that survivors can give is for women to know their bodies, Caraway said.

February 15, 2005, WHAS News, Students raise money for cancer-stricken teacher (view story online)

They are counting money. Dollars, tens, twenties, quarters, a hundred dollars over here. And when many of the 1,100 students at Crosby Middle School raise their hands in class, a light blue bracelet reminds them of a teacher who should be here.

Sixth grade science teacher Deirdre Edwards is missing from the classroom.

"I was thinking I need to bring some in," says sixth grader Jeffrey Owens. "She's one of the fantastic teachers I've ever had. I just really want to help her."

"I miss her a lot. She would always make something make sense," says student Emily Reid.

Edwards, 33, stunned the school with her news. She has had a recurrence of an aggressive ovarian cancer. She's been gone from the classroom for a few weeks after major surgery February 1.

Students at Crosby Middle School are wearing these bracelets in honor of teacher Dierdre Edwards, who has ovarian cancer "I experienced stomach pain in January of last year," she explains. "When they opened me up there was cancer all along my abdominal wall. The doctor removed all he could."

She was first diagnosed a year ago. But the cancer had been in remission. The fundraising is to get her to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston for an extended stay. Five thousand dollars has been raised so far. She was in disbelief.

"They have just lifted a huge worry off of me. I'm overwhelmed by the support they've shown. I'm speechless," says Edwards. "And I know some of my students don't have all that much money. For them to give means the world to me."

Her fellow teachers say it also been a huge lesson to everyone, including the students.

"They've had a lot of questions, don't know what ovarian cancer means," says Crosby teacher Annette Ellis.

Edwards will be leaving Tuesday with her husband, Frank. Her 3-year-old son stays behind with relatives. The school will keep raising money as she's away.

She is not on the school's health insurance plan, and since her treatments in Houston may be experimental, insurance coverage through her husband's plan is unlikely.

We asked her if she had a message for her class.

"I hope you guys are being good, learning science and doing best you can, like I know you can," she says.

And at Crosby, they think of her every time they write lessons and see that bracelet.

"We love you, Ms. Edwards, and we miss you and we hope you get well soon," says sixth grader Stephanie Wilson.

July 14, 2004, Reuters, Late Motherhood may Protect Ovaries, click here to view

February 3, 2004, NY Times, New Cancer Test Stirs Hope and Concern by Andrew Pollack

Jill Doimer's mother died in 2002 from ovarian cancer, detected too late to be effectively treated. So Ms. Doimer is eagerly awaiting the introduction of a new test that holds the promise of detecting early-stage ovarian cancer far more accurately than any test available now, using only blood from a finger prick. Not only does she plan to be tested, but an advocacy group she helped found, Ovarian Awareness of Kentucky, also intends to spread the word to women and doctors. "If it's going to happen to me or anyone I know, I want it to be caught at an early stage," said Ms. Doimer, who lives in Louisville. The new test, expected to be available in the next few months, could have a big effect on public health if it works as advertised. That is because when ovarian cancer is caught early, when it is treatable by surgery, more than 90 percent of women live five years or longer. But right now, about three-quarters of cases are detected after the cancer has advanced, and then only 35 percent of women survive five years. The test is also the first to use a new technology that some believers say could revolutionize diagnostics. It looks not for a single telltale protein - like the prostate-specific antigen, or P.S.A., used to diagnose prostate cancer - but rather for a complex fingerprint formed by all the proteins in the blood. Similar tests are being developed for prostate, pancreatic, breast and other cancers. The technique may work for other diseases as well. "I've been in cancer research for 40 years and I think it's the most important breakthrough in those years," said Dr. John S. Kovach, director of the Long Island Cancer Center at Stony Brook University. "I think in 10 years ladies will have blood tests instead of a mammogram for breast cancer." Some experts, however, say that the technique, while promising, is still unproved. They say the ovarian test in particular has not been adequately validated and is being put on the market prematurely through a route that does not require approval by the Food and Drug Administration. If the test is not accurate, they say, it could result in unnecessary surgery for biopsies or ovary removal for many women. "Certainly there's no published work that would make me tell a woman she should get this test," said Dr. Nicole Urban, head of gynecologic cancer research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Three statisticians from the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston analyzed data put on the Internet by the test developers and say they found various inconsistencies. "We're saying that on the basis of the data they posted, no, we don't believe this works," said one of the statisticians, Dr. Keith A. Baggerly, assistant professor in the department of biostatistics and applied mathematics. The test, called OvaCheck, was developed by Correlogic Systems Inc., of Bethesda, Md., with scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the Food and Drug Administration. Correlogic Systems has licensed the test to Quest Diagnostics of Teterboro, N.J., and Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, known as LabCorp, of Burlington, N.C., the nation's two biggest clinical laboratory companies. Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, which will compete, say they expect to begin offering the test in the next few months. The price is expected to be $100 to $200. Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp will analyze blood samples sent by doctors, rather than sell test kits to doctors and hospitals. Tests performed at a central location do not require F.D.A. approval. Diagnostic companies say such "home-brew" tests are a common way to make them available quickly and that for some tests it would not be economically practical to conduct the clinical trials needed for F.D.A. approval. At times, though, the agency has had concerns that such tests have not been adequately validated. The agency recently ordered Roche to take a complex genetic test off the market until it could be approved by the agency. Dr. Emmanuel F. Petricoin III, an agency scientist who helped develop OvaCheck, said the criticisms of it were based "in some instances on not understanding the entirety of the science." And executives at Correlogic Systems, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp say it is not fair to cite lack of validation because they are validating the test now. Gary Samuels, a spokesman for Quest Diagnostics, said his company and LabCorp were each testing the same 1,000 samples to see if they got the same results, a validation process he called "lengthy and meticulous." He said Quest Diagnostics expected to decide by the end of the month whether the test was reliable enough to market. Brad Smith, executive vice president for public affairs at LabCorp, agreed, saying, "If we're not comfortable with it, it won't launch." Many companies and academic labs have joined the race to find so-called biomarkers, blood components like proteins or lipids that can signal disease. "There are very few diseases, when you really go through it, that we can diagnose with a simple blood or urine test," said Dr. Gordon Ringold, chairman and chief executive of SurroMed, a Menlo Park, Calif., company looking for such markers. Until now, said Dr. Howard Schulman, vice president of research and development at SurroMed, "biomarker discovery has relied on knowing everything possible about the disease," searching for proteins involved in the cause of the disease. But results have been sparse. In the last decade only about 10 proteins have been the basis for diagnostic tests approved by the F.D.A. For instance, Matritech Inc., a company in Newton, Mass., sells a bladder cancer screening test that looks for a protein called NMP22. A single biomarker may not work because a disease is heterogeneous or because more than one condition can cause a protein's level to rise, resulting in false positives. That is the case with the P.S.A. for prostate cancer. So, now, the search for biomarkers is shifting. Instead of trying to understand disease mechanisms, some companies are using new technology called proteomics to screen cells or blood rapidly, looking for proteins present in diseased people but not in healthy ones. Similar efforts are being used for genes and metabolites, substances like fatty acids made by cells. Moreover, in many cases, scientists are trying to find not a single marker but several that could be used together to get a more accurate reading. OvaCheck goes a step beyond that. It analyzes patterns made by all the proteins in the blood without even knowing what the proteins are. In the tests, proteins in the blood sample are analyzed by a mass spectrometer, a complex machine that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The proteins are vaporized, given an electric charge and propelled down a tube. How fast they make the trip depends on their mass. The machine produces a squiggly graph that essentially shows the distribution of masses in the blood sample. There are thousands of data points, with spikes corresponding to particularly abundant proteins. Correlogic Systems developed a computer program that analyzes these complex patterns and learns to distinguish between blood from patients with cancer and blood from those without. When the technique was first tried on 116 blood samples from women whose disease status was already known, it correctly detected all cases of ovarian cancer, including 18 in the earliest stage. It classified only 5 percent of the noncancerous samples as cancerous. When the results were published in the medical journal Lancet in 2002, it suggested a powerful testing method was at hand. "We think now that there is an entire ocean of biomarkers that never before was known to exist," said Dr. Petricoin. He is co-director of the clinical proteomics program run by the F.D.A. and the National Cancer Institute with Dr. Lance A. Liotta, who helped develop the ovarian test. Ovarian cancer, which causes about 14,000 deaths a year in the United States, is now diagnosed with a test for a single protein called Cancer Antigen 125. But CA-125 is best at detecting a recurrence of cancer or a late-stage cancer, not a disease in the early stages. Vaginal ultrasound, another often-used technique, is also not so good for early-stage disease, experts say. But experts say OvaCheck must give virtually no false positives to make it useful for general screening. Fifteen women out of 100,000 get ovarian cancer each year, said Dr. Beth Y. Karlan, director of gynecologic oncology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. So if OvaCheck were used for yearly checks on the whole population, even a 1 percent rate of false positives would mean 1,000 false diagnoses for every 15 cases detected. Peter J. Levine, president of Correlogic Systems, said for that reason, the test would be recommended only for women at high risk for ovarian cancer, a population of about 10 million in the United States. This includes women with relatives who have had ovarian cancer, women who have had breast cancer, and women with mutations in genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2 that indicate a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Other experts said that women who tested positive would be given the CA-125 test and vaginal ultrasound to try to confirm the diagnoses, rather than being sent for surgery immediately. Yet another problem, some experts said, is that the samples taken to test the technique so far have come mainly from women who were scheduled for surgery, meaning their cancer had produced noticeable symptoms. Dr. Petricoin conceded that it was unclear if the test would work equally well for early-stage ovarian cancer that does not produce symptoms, as is often the case. Some experts say they would not trust a test in which the proteins being measured and their biological relationship to cancer are unknown. "If you don't know what you're measuring, it's a dangerous black-box technology," said Dr. Eleftherios P. Diamandis, head of clinical biochemistry at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. He said the rare proteins that might indicate cancer were likely to be drowned out by abundant proteins in the blood. "They are rushing into something and it could be a disaster," Dr. Diamandis added. Dr. Petricoin countered that recent studies had shown that the rare proteins adhere to more abundant blood proteins, so their concentration is increased to detectable levels. And he said the failure to develop many biomarkers so far showed how hard it was to identify specific proteins. "We don't understand many of the basic mechanisms of cancer yet, and we think we have knowledge of what markers to use?" Dr. Petricoin said. "It's false." Some critics say that for the test to be accepted, the Lancet data must be reproduced by others and the technique tested in larger trials. For instance, Dr. Karlan of Cedars-Sinai said, a few years ago scientists were excited by early results of an ovarian cancer test using a marker called LPA, but results of a larger test were disappointing. LPL Technologies, a Cleveland company, is still working to validate that test. The Lancet data could not be reproduced exactly even by the test developers. They found that the mass spectrometer they used, which was made for research, not high-volume work, produced different patterns even when the same samples were tested on different days. So they switched to a new machine. William E. Rich, president and chief executive of Ciphergen Biosystems Inc., which made the equipment used in the Lancet study, said that the machines were reliable and that his company had stopped working with Correlogic Systems because "we don't have confidence in that approach." Ciphergen Biosystems, which is based in Fremont, Calif., hopes to introduce its own ovarian cancer test, based on three known proteins, by the end of this year, Dr. Rich said. Developers of OvaCheck said that though different machines and sample preparation techniques resulted in different patterns, the computer could figure out how to discriminate cancer from noncancer. They retested the Lancet samples with different equipment and got the same good results, they said. With a larger sample, they had 100 percent accuracy, with no false positives. So as long as Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp are consistent in how they process samples, they should get good results, they said. And others have shown the approach works. Dr. O. John Semmes, an associate professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, is using protein patterns to develop a prostate cancer diagnostic. He said his group had found that multiple labs got the same results when they ran the same set of samples. Still, he said, more extensive validation is needed and is under way. OvaCheck's developers plan to conduct a clinical trial to win F.D.A approval for diagnosing recurrences of ovarian cancer. A trial for approval as an early-stage diagnostic tool would take too long, they said. Dr. Petricoin says that even if the test is not perfect, it is "blowing away what's being used now," like the CA-125 test. "You have women right now that are getting prophylactic oophorectomies based on CA-125," he said, referring to the surgical removal of ovaries to prevent cancer. For that reason, some doctors think the test will be in great demand from anxious women who view ovarian cancer as a death sentence. "Before you mass-market to the uninformed, fearful population, it should be peer-reviewed," said Dr. Karlan of Cedars-Sinai. But when asked whether she would recommend her patients not get tested, she said: "It doesn't matter what I recommend. They are going to do it anyway."

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