Active clinical trials for "Ovarian Neoplasms"

Cancer is the leading cause of mortality in the investigators country. According to the statistics of the Department of Health, the incidence of ovarian cancer increased in recent years and the mortality rate is highest in all gynecologic malignancies in Taiwan. Ovarian cancer becomes a more and more important disease gradually in the field of gynecologic malignancies. The classification of histology in ovarian cancer included epithelial ovarian cancer、germ cell tumors、sex-cord cell tumors…etc. Epithelial ovarian carcinoma is the most common ovarian cancer clinically. Early diagnosis is difficult due to the lack of obvious initial symptoms, so ovarian cancer patients are usually at advanced stage when the diagnosis is confirmed. The prognostic parameters for ovarian carcinomas include tumor stage, histological subtype, degree of malignancy, residual tumor after surgical intervention and the response to chemotherapy. However, the possible etiology and mechanism of ovarian cancer is still unclear. However, there is no epidemiologic data of ovarian cancer in Taiwan. Therefore the investigators propose this study to use Taiwan registry database provided by Department of Health to analyze the epidemiology and prognosis of ovarian cancer patients in Taiwan.

The purpose of this project is to examine whether the risk of developing ovarian cancer is increased in Danish women with congenital missing teeth as a result of their failure to develop (hypodontia). Should this prove to be the case, these women could be offered regular clinical controls and prophylactic removal of their ovaries when menopause enters and the ovaries are no longer functional (producing hormones). If there is a connection between congenital hypodontia and the development of different types of cancer, the investigators will perform a genetic screening in families with increased risk of cancer and hypodontia for changes in relevant genes, based on the current literature. The investigators hereby search for new genes, which in a changed form leads to an increased risk of cancer and thereby enables us to perform genetic screening in risk families.

Can MRI be used to stage ovarian cancer?

The purpose of this study is to create a tissue bank of gynecologic cancers and normal tissue for the study of cancer in order to better understand the changes occurring on a molecular level (DNA, RNA, protein) that lead to the development of cancer.

Ovarian cancer became a more and more important disease in recent years due to its first mortality rate of gynecologic malignancies. The incidence of ovarian cancer also increased in recent year in Taiwan. The lack of symptoms, difficulties in early diagnosis, insufficient accurate tumor markers, and lack of information about ovarian tumor biology contribute to the poor prognosis in ovarian cancer patients. The prognostic parameters for ovarian carcinomas are tumor stage, histologic subtype, degree of malignancy, and residual tumor after surgical treatment. However, these factors present an incomplete picture of the tumor biology of ovarian cancer and are frequently interrelated. Thus, the identification of new biologic factors predictive of individual disease course and prognosis would be extremely useful. Detection of tumor markers that are released into the circulation can aid in the diagnosis and/or monitoring of therapeutic responses of patients with various tumors, including carcinomas of ovary. CA125 is the most commonly used serum marker for patients with ovarian carcinoma. Although it has proven clinically valuable in monitoring the response of patients to therapy, some ovarian carcinomas do not express CA125, and CA125 often is increased in patients with inflammatory disease. Thus, there is a need for improvement, either in the form of a more specific and/or sensitive assay or an assay that uses a different marker and can be used to complement CA125 toward the goal to improve patient survival by improving diagnosis. Mesothelin is a 40-kDa glycosylphosphatidylinositol-linked glycoprotein. In normal tissues, the expression of mesothelin has subsequently been shown to be largely restricted to mesothelial cells, although immunoreactivity has also been reported in epithelial cells of the trachea, tonsil, fallopian tube, and kidney. Mesothelin has been shown to be over-expressed in pancreatic carcinomas, gastric carcinoma and ovarian carcinoma, and it seems that mesothelin may be utilized as a new tumor marker for ovarian carcinoma. We will evaluate that if mesothelin can be a new potential tumor marker for ovarian cancer in this proposal.