Flaxseed as Maintenance Therapy for Ovarian Cancer Patients in Remission

For the year 2014, it is projected there will be 21,980 women diagnosed and 14,270 deaths from ovarian cancer (OC) in the US. OC is the leading cause of death from gynecologic malignancies and ranks second among newly diagnosed gynecological cancers in the United States. More than 70% of patients present with advanced disease (stages II-IV). Although most patients (70-80%) initially respond to cytoreductive surgery and adjuvant paclitaxel and platinum-based chemotherapy, approximately 80% of these women will experience disease recurrence. For stages III and IV, the risk of recurrence is very high, with 5-year survival rates ranging from just 13% to 44%. Furthermore, OC represents a high potential for metastases even in the setting of complete response to initial therapy. Efforts to devise new treatment strategies are therefore essential in order to improve survival. In this grant application, the investigators postulate that utilizing dietary supplementation of flaxseed for maintenance therapy in patients with OC in clinical remission following treatment with platinum-based regimens will be tolerable and prolong their progression-free survival (PFS). The investigators hypothesis is based on the following: * Data from the investigators laboratory revealed that flaxseed effectively decreased severity and progression of OC in the only spontaneous preclinical egg-laying hen model that fully recapitulates human OC. * In a phase II study, flaxseed supplementation reduced proliferation rates of prostate cancer after just 30 days. * Flaxseed has been shown to inhibit solid tumor growth and metastases in several other preclinical cancer models (breast, prostate, colon). * Flaxseed is a safe dietary supplement for cancer patients. * Flaxseed supplementation increased survival in our investigators' animal model and these flaxseed-fed hens exhibited lower inflammatory markers and maintained a healthy weight, inferring a better quality of life (QOL).