The world’s first ovarian cancer vaccine has been awarded research funding in the United Kingdom, marking the first step toward a groundbreaking preventive measure that scientists say could eliminate the disease entirely.
OvarianVax is being developed by scientists at the University of Oxford. Cancer Research U.K. awarded the team on Friday with up to $790,000 over the next three years.
Dr. Ahmed Ahmed, director of the university’s ovarian cancer cell laboratory, told the BBC that the vaccine will be designed to train the immune system to recognize the proteins on the surface of ovarian cancer, called tumor-associated antigens.
“The idea is, if you give the vaccine, these tiny tumors will hopefully either reduce, shrink really significantly, or disappear,” Ahmed said.
Ovarian cancer is the eighth most common cancer in women and the eighteenth most common cancer overall, according to World Cancer Research Fund International.
The U.K. National Health Service estimates that there are approximately 7,500 new ovarian cancer cases in the U.K. each year. That’s about 21 new diagnoses each day.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were over 20,000 new cases of ovarian cancer in 2021, the last year for which incidence data is available.
As of now, there is no screening test available for ovarian cancer, and the disease is often diagnosed late because the symptoms, including bloating and reduced appetite, are not disease-specific.
Some women are at higher risk of developing ovarian cancer because of genetic mutations and family history.
About 45% of people with an altered BRCA1 gene and nearly 20% with an altered BRCA2 gene will develop ovarian cancer by the age of 80. Women without these mutations are at a 2% risk.
It is currently advised that women at high risk consider having their ovaries removed before age 35, meaning that they go through menopause early and cannot have future pregnancies.
The hope is that the new vaccine will be an alternative to removing ovaries as the first line of defense.
“We still have a long way to go but it is a really exciting time. I’m very optimistic myself,” Ahmed told SkyNews.
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After the vaccine is created, researchers will begin human clinical trials for patients with the disease.
The next step would be to vaccinate women with BRCA1/2 genetic mutations, followed by an expansion to the general population without known disease or other risk factors.