About 21,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year.  And because the disease is often not detected until its late stages, only 45 percent of women will survive longer than 5 years after diagnosis.

Ovarian cancer is a big focus at City of Hope. Your generosity is helping us overcome it.

You are helping to change that.

Led by Mark Wakabayashi, M.D., City of Hope's gynecologic cancer program brings our distinctive, multidisciplinary approach to detecting, treating and ultimately curing ovarian, uterine and cervical cancers.

"Our focus is ovarian cancer," Dr. Wakabayashi says, "because the numbers are so high and survival rates so low."

Fortunately, he reports, we are making progress.  Avastin, a drug created using technology developed at City of Hope, has been shown to stop tumor growth.  It is now being tested for effectiveness on ovarian cancer.

Intraperitoneal, or IP, chemotherapy has added as much as 16 months to a cancer patient's lifespan.  City of Hope was one of the first institutions in the U.S. to use IP to treat ovarian cancer.  Today, Dr. Wakabayashi says, even women who have their initial surgeries elsewhere come to City of Hope for IP chemo.

City of Hope's labs are busy, too.  Promising research by Dr. Richard Jove and Dr. Hua Yu on the STAT3 protein may lead to a drug that stops tumor growth and triggers immune-system responses, while Dr. Michael Jensen's work on T-cells suggests a day when a patient’s own immune system can be supercharged to destroy cancer.

"We have a remarkable team here," Dr. Wakabayashi says.  You are part of the team, thanks to your generous support of City of Hope.