£600,000 given to create the world’s first ovarian cancer prevention vaccine

Researchers at the University of Oxford have been awarded up to £600,000 from Cancer Research UK to create the world’s first vaccine to prevent ovarian cancer. 

OvarianVax is a vaccine that will teach the immune system to recognise and attack the earliest stages of ovarian cancer.

Why do we need a prevention vaccine?  

There are around 7,500 new ovarian cancer cases every year in the UK, and it’s the 6th most common cancer in women. Women with faulty BRCA1 genes have a higher ovarian cancer risk, as do, to a lesser extent, women with a faulty BRCA2 gene, versus women without these faulty variants.

Currently, some women with BRCA1/2 mutations who are at very high risk of ovarian cancer are offered surgery to help prevent it. But as this surgery can involve the removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes, it means they are then unable to have children. At the same time, many cases of ovarian cancer aren’t picked up until they are at a late stage, when they’re harder to treat.  

“We need better strategies to prevent ovarian cancer,” said Professor Ahmed Ahmed, lead for the OvarianVax project.  

“OvarianVax could offer the solution to prevent cancer in women at high risk. Teaching the immune system to recognise the very early signs of cancer is a tough challenge. But we now have highly sophisticated tools, which give us real insights into how the immune system recognises ovarian cancer.”    

“Projects like OvarianVax are a really important step forward into an exciting future, where cancer is much more preventable,” said Michelle Mitchell, our chief executive. This funding will power crucial discoveries in the lab which will realise our ambitions to improve ovarian cancer survival.”  

It will still take many years for the vaccine to reach a point where it is widely available to women at risk of ovarian cancer. However, this funding is an exciting step towards a world where clinicians can prevent ovarian cancer at an early stage, rather than treating it once the disease has already taken hold.