My sister Antoinette was a bright, vivacious and outgoing person. Although there was a year between us in age, people often thought of us as twins, and we certainly were as close as twins. Antoinette had such a bright smile! She really lit up the room wherever she was. Sadly, Antoinette was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 46, and passed away at just 49 years old.
We were away together when Antoinette first told me she was feeling bloated and didn’t want to eat. She had been to the doctor but her medication didn’t give her any relief. I knew she was nervous when she was on holiday in Portugal with her family, and she called me every night. Again she was feeling bloated and didn’t want to eat.
Having received an ultrasound and gone for further investigation, my precious sister Antoinette was told she had ovarian cancer. Stages were never really mentioned, but I do remember at one point, somebody said it was ‘stage four’. I didn’t ask about it because I think the fear of it being such an advanced stage might have given her less hope. Maybe there was more hope if we didn’t think about the stage.
Antoinette began chemotherapy and it was as terrible as you imagine. She was scared because she didn’t know what to expect. Soon however, she made friends with the hospital staff and the other patients there for treatment. Although anxious and worried, Antoinette remained positive and really wanted to help. I remember she came to Cork to make a video about ovarian cancer for Breakthrough Cancer Research. It was important to her that others know the warning signs and support research.
I’m telling you all of this not to share my grief, although that’s absolutely there. But to share my hope that together we can help spare the next person their own grief. Because with your generous support, Breakthrough are moving research along so fast! Cancer can be hard to diagnose and harder to treat. But that’s changing, because of research.
During this the season of giving, if you have anything at all to spare, please consider donating to cancer research and giving other families like mine the chance to spend another Christmas with their loved ones.
Bronagh Traynor, Antoinette’s sister and a proud supporter of Breakthrough Cancer Research
Having lost her mother to ovarian cancer, Dr. Marion Butler is now working to try and identify an alternative treatment option when chemotherapy stops working.
Dr. Marion Butler is a lecturer in Immunology and Principal Investigator in the Department of Biology at Maynooth University. Unfortunately for Marion and her family, she lost her mother, Ann Butler, to ovarian cancer in July 2020. It is understandable then that Marion is now engaged in ovarian cancer research, focusing on chemo-resistance. Thanks to your generosity, Marion’s work over the past year has been supported by Breakthrough Cancer Research.
Marion is working to try and identify an alternative treatment option when chemotherapy stops working, also known as drug-resistance. She wants to learn more about which proteins to target. 80% of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer receive their diagnosis when the cancer is already advanced. A biomarker for earlier diagnosis is vital for this deadly silent disease. That discovery will save lives.
A type of immunotherapy called Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs) heightens the activity of key immune cells, so that they become more effective at killing cancer cells. Clinical trials with ICIs are on-going for different cancer types including ovarian cancer. They plan to test a novel drug combination which relies on the use of an ICI together with other drugs to find out if this reduces the growth of ovarian cancer cells. They also plan to examine how this drug combination impacts the activity of immune cells by taking blood samples from healthy donors and patients with ovarian cancer.
Ovarian cancer urgently needs research investment. It is a poor outcome cancer, where the 5-year survival rate is about 36%. Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynaecological cancer. In Ireland, about 400 women are diagnosed each year, and as many as 300 lose their lives. More research is needed in order to bring about a change in those outcomes for those women.
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