The Long-Term Ovarian Cancer Survivor Project: A Department of Defense initiative.

In 2019 there will be 22,500 new cases of ovarian cancer, resulting in approximately 14,000 deaths. Ovarian cancer remains the highest case fatality rate of any gynecologic cancer. Despite significant improvement in the surgical and chemotherapeutic managements of ovarian cancer patients, the overall survival has not changed in 30 years. However, these new therapies have resulted in a significant improvement in median survival, resulting in increasing numbers of patients surviving greater than 10 years with disease. The clinical and molecular features of these unique patients remain uncharacterized. The Department of Defense Ovarian Cancer Research Program (DOD OCRP) funded the creation of our interdisciplinary Long-term Survivor Consortium (LTSC), composed of 6 research sites including MDACC, UAB, IU, UCI, Ludwig Cancer Research, and University Hospitals of Canton Vaud (CHUV) and INOVA, a bioinformatic center at DFCI, and administrative centers at UCI and UAB. The purpose of the consortium is to identify characteristics and predictors of long-term survival in advanced ovarian cancer patients. The consortium is overseen by both a scientific and advocacy advisory board to guide direction and efforts. 285 specimens of advanced-stage high-grade serous ovarian cancers with full clinical annotation including greater than 12 years of follow-up were analyzed for this project. In addition, 340 early-stage high-grade ovarian cancers were available for one of the AIMs of the project. These latter samples were obtained through the creation of an international consortium funded by the DOD OCRP. All specimens were first reviewed for tumor context by HE 2019 Sep 13-16, 2019; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Clin Cancer Res 2020;26(13_Suppl):Abstract nr IA06.