Ovarian Cancer Treatments 'Coming Down the Pike' Create Resurgence for Patients

It’s an exciting time in the ovarian cancer space with many new developments on the horizon extending survival for patients facing the disease, says Shannon Westin, M.D., M.P.H.

In the last five years, there have been more drug approvals for the treatment of ovarian cancer than there have been in the last 20 to 30 years combined, said Westin, a gynecologic oncologist at from The University of Texas MD Anderson. At the 2019 Ovarian Cancer Heroes event in Honolulu, Hawaii, she discussed the evolving treatment landscape for the various subsets of ovarian cancer and the new therapies and drugs that are available, including PARP inhibitors, antiangiogenics and immunotherapies.

“One of the things I’m most excited about is now working to figure out who should get what drug and when, how to sequence the drugs to get the best impact and when we need to combine them,” said Westin. “It’s just a great renaissance for the patients because we know we’ve got all these different [treatments] coming down the pike and we can keep extending survival for them.”