May 12, 2010 | 1 minute read

An intriguing AICR-funded study on flaxseed and ovarian cancer is making news today. The study investigated how a flaxseed-enriched diet would effect ovarian cancer development in hens. Although the study was conducted in animals, it will hopefully lead to research that will help ovarian cancer survivors.

Why hens? Hens are the only other animals besides humans known to spontaneously develop ovarian cancer, and at a relatively high rate. That makes hens a strong model to study ovarian cancer, a disease dubbed “the silent killer” because it is often not detected until the later stages.

You can read a news report about the study here.

You can also read an earlier report on the study and the lead scientist Dale Hales, PhD. , which we wrote about in Cancer Research Update.