Ovarian cancer: An ever challenging malady

Abstract

Ovarian cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer related deaths in women with a five year survival rate of only 30–40%. Amongst the three broad subgroups of ovarian cancer, epithelial ovarian cancer is the most common and is divided in mainly five subtypes based histology and clinical behaviour. In patients when the disease is still confined to ovaries, surgery alone is curative for more than 90% patients. Unfortunately, most women are diagnosed with advanced stage disease and recurs in majority despite of debulking surgery and initial response to chemotherapy. Thus ovarian cancer is still a challenge to clinicians which gets more complicated due to asymptomatic nature of the early stage disease and frequent development of resistance to standard therapies. Therefore, researchers worldwide are engaged in identifying markers for early detection of ovarian cancer, investigating molecular mechanisms of chemoresistance, improving detection methods and developing novel therapeutic measures. In this review, we attempt to discuss the contemporary research and challenges associated with epithelial ovarian cancer along with the future improvements in various areas such as early detection of ovarian cancer through Multiplex-Methylation specific PCR (MSP) assay and Serial Analysis of Gene expression (SAGE) assay and identifying new biomarkers, facilitating personalised chemotherapy regime by various chemo-response assays, novel drugs and targeted therapies which will aid in enhancing the overall survival rate in future and overcome this deadly gynaecologic disease.