Ovarian Cancer

Actress Angelina Jolie's decision to have a double mastectomy rather than risk developing breast cancer hit close to home for Melissa DeSantis, a Bel Air mother of three children. As DeSantis read about Jolie's experience, she began to feel a sense of kinship to the Hollywood star. DeSantis also made the tough decision to have her breasts removed in a February surgery. Like Jolie, she had one of the inherited gene mutations that leaves many women more likely to develop cancer.

"Mom. Do you have that gene? Do I? Have you been tested? I thought Grandma had breast cancer . Why weren't you ever tested?" The questions from my 27-year-old daughter were coming fast. Angelina Jolie published an essay in The New York Times on Tuesday, saying that she had had both breasts removed, and then reconstructed, after learning that she carried the mutated gene that can predispose women to breast and ovarian cancer. And Jessie was on the phone to me. Family history had moved the actress to get tested.

A new international study shows that treating ovarian cancer with Avastin delays the disease progression and may improve survival. The drug, generically called bevacizumab, seemed to keep the disease from returning for two months. It was delayed five to six months in the highest risk group. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , was co-led by Drs. Amit Oza of the Princess Margaret Cancer Program at the University of Toronto and Timothy Perren of the St James' Institute of Oncology in Leeds, U.K. The study began in 2004 and continues for another year.

Actress Angelina Jolie, who got a double mastectomy to lower her chances of breast cancer, will also have her ovaries removed, according to People magazine. Jolie said in a New York Times editorial Tuesday that she had her breasts removed and reconstructed because she has a gene mutation that makes her risk of breast cancer high. Women with the BRCA1 gene mutation also have a high chance of developing ovarian cancer. There is no test to detect ovarian cancer and women often die from the disease because it is diagnosed in the late stages.

Ovarian cancer is the most common, fatal, gynecologic cancer. Fortunately, only one in 70 women will develop this cancer. By comparison, one in 10 women will develop breast cancer.But for the 22,000 women who will be diagnosed with this cancer in the next year, it is not very comforting to realize that only 40 percent will live five years. The most frustrating fact to scientists is that despite 20 years of studies in humans and 40 years of studies in animals, we have not yet discovered how to prevent the disease.

When cancer experts announced yesterday that they had identified certain symptoms that might indicate ovarian cancer, they sent a pointed message to patients and clinicians: Scrutiny of seemingly benign physical complaints can save lives. The "first national consensus on ovarian cancer symptoms" urged women and clinicians to regard bloating, abdominal pain, eating difficulties and urinary symptoms as possible early warning signs. According to the statement by the American Cancer Society, the Gynecologic Cancer Foundation and the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, women should contact their doctors if they experience such symptoms almost daily for a few weeks.

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Ovarian-cancer survival may be predicted by the levels of two proteins in the body, a new study shows, while other recent research suggests that more women's lives might be saved by using existing tests to diagnose persistent symptoms that might indicate the presence of the so-called "silent killer." Scientists at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston said in a report this week that low levels of both atypical protein kinase C iota and Cyclin E corresponded to a better chance of long-term survival for patients.

Researchers have clarified the vague warning signs of ovarian cancer - the so-called "silent killer" - which could lead to earlier detection and improved survival rates among women with the disease. Many healthy women experience at least some of the symptoms associated with the cancer, which is generally diagnosed only after it has reached an advanced stage. But scientists at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle found that the symptoms - which include bloating, constipation, fatigue and urinary problems - occurred more frequently and with more severity in women with malignancies.

Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc., the Baltimore-based biotechnology firm, expects to move an experimental treatment for ovarian cancer into human trials late this year or early next year, Dr. Craig Smith, the company's chief executive officer, told analysts and investment managers yesterday at the BT Alex. Brown health care conferance.Craig was among the 200 biotechnology and health care executives scheduled to give presentations at the event being held in Baltimore. It concludes tomorrow.The treatment Guilford is developing is a biodegradable polymer-based gel containing the powerful cancer-fighting drug taxol.

Actress Angelina Jolie's decision to have a double mastectomy rather than risk developing breast cancer hit close to home for Melissa DeSantis, a Bel Air mother of three children. As DeSantis read about Jolie's experience, she began to feel a sense of kinship to the Hollywood star. DeSantis also made the tough decision to have her breasts removed in a February surgery. Like Jolie, she had one of the inherited gene mutations that leaves many women more likely to develop cancer.

It is well documented that African-American women with breast cancer are more likely to have a more aggressive type of the disease that kills them, but why remains a mystery. The answers may be found one day soon, as researchers focus more on the genetic makeup of cancer tumors and how African-American women may respond differently to treatment than women of other races. "There are two different tracks of research going on that could in the future help better treat African-American women with breast cancer ," said Rebecca McCoy, community health director of the advocacy group Komen Maryland.

Every time a woman is tested for gene mutations linked to significantly higher rates of breast and ovarian cancer, her blood is sent to a lab in Utah. That's because Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. owns the patents to the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 mutations, giving it control over all research and testing done nationwide. The company charges thousands of dollars for each set of results. The patents have become the subject of a legal fight that could soon head to the U.S. Supreme Court and have sparked a broader discussion about the fast-evolving field of genomics and so-called personalized medicine, in which treatments are tailored based on a patient's genetic makeup.

Rebecca D. Dorsey, a Baltimore-born and -raised chanteuse, died Sept. 14 of ovarian cancer at her home in Sea Cliff, N.Y. She was 54. The daughter of a physician and a public relations executive, Rebecca Devereux Dorsey was born in Baltimore and raised in Glencoe and Homeland. After graduating in 1976 from Garrison Forest School, she earned a bachelor's degree in dance from Sarah Lawrence College in 1980. "She began studying singing at the Sorbonne, where she had gone to study French, and realized she had a voice," said her mother, Glorian Devereux Dorsey of Cockeysville, former director of public relations at The Baltimore Sun. "Then she came back and started studying acting in New York when she was in her 20s. " Ms. Dorsey modeled and had supporting roles in such films as "Wall Street," "Slaves of New York," "Working Girl" and several Woody Allen pictures, her mother said.

When she heard Mercy Medical Center was going to celebrate National Cancer Survivors Day on Sunday, Megan Campbell knew she had to be there. The doctors and nurses at Mercy are, after all, the reason her two kids got to know their grandmother. The six years since her mother, Priscilla "Jo" Jones, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Campbell said, have meant the world to her family. At the time, Campbell was pregnant, and she wasn't even sure Jones would see the birth of her first grandchild.

Carolyn Holly Howard, a practitioner of alternative medical techniques, died Tuesday at her Baltimore home after an eight-year battle with ovarian cancer. The resident of the Woodlands at Coldspring Newtown was 61. Ms. Howard was born in Dallas, Texas, but moved around a lot as a child because of her father's work running Christian summer camps for a national organization. The family eventually settled in Ridgewood, N.J., where Ms. Howard graduated from high school. She attended Hope College in Holland, Mich., and Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., before moving to California in the 1970s.

Shares of Novavax Inc., developer of an estrogen-replacement lotion, took another beating yesterday, sinking 16 percent after the release of a study linking ovarian cancer with estrogen-replacement therapy. The study, which appeared in yesterday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, was one more bit of bad news for a Columbia company that had hoped to put Estrasorb, the first drug it developed itself, on the market by now. "There's no question it's been a challenging few months," said Chief Executive Officer John A. Spears.

Victims of ovarian cancer who are pinning their last hopes on the experimental drug taxol are suddenly fighting not just their disease but the refusal of insurance companies to cover costs of administering the drug.In Maryland, many doctors and patients say they are angry that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland and other smaller insurers suddenly began in October to refuse to pay for taxol after more than a year of approving claims.Some companies, including Blue Cross, even began to ask some patients to return money paid for past treatments, saying in letters that the reimbursements were made in error.

A host of prescription drugs have been in low supply around the United States for some time, but doctors have been warning about a particularly acute shortage of a set of life-saving cancer drugs. Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today that it has taken steps to boost the supply of those cancer drugs -- Doxil, or doxorubicin hydrochloride liposome injection, and methotrexate. On Doxil , the FDA plans to import temporarily a replacement drug called Lipodox to meet patient needs in coming weeks.

A new international study shows that treating ovarian cancer with Avastin delays the disease progression and may improve survival. The drug, generically called bevacizumab, seemed to keep the disease from returning for two months. It was delayed five to six months in the highest risk group. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , was co-led by Drs. Amit Oza of the Princess Margaret Cancer Program at the University of Toronto and Timothy Perren of the St James' Institute of Oncology in Leeds, U.K. The study began in 2004 and continues for another year.