Abstract
Worldwide, ovarian cancer (CaO) is the leading cause of death from
gynecological cancer and the fourth most common cause of cancer death in
women. In 2006, according to the American Cancer Society, 20,180 new cases of
CaO will be diagnosed in the United States and 15,310 women will die from the
disease. This high death rate results from the difficulty associated with
detecting CaO at an early stage and the lack of effective therapies to treat
advanced disease. As we discuss, physicians are unanimous in calling for the
development of a diagnostic test that can identify CaO before it metastasizes.
In this report, we examine the pathophysiology of CaO and describe current
methods of screening for the cancer, the use of biomarkers to diagnose CaO,
proteomic and genomic technologies that researchers are employing to identify
and test biomarkers, emerging biomarkers, and the use of biomarkers to improve
clinical trials of CaO treatments and ultimately to tailor treatment to the
individual patient.
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