The platypus is an ungainly, rather strange looking creature, yet according to science it is our oldest mammalian relative. Now researchers from the Royal Adelaide Hospital and the University of Adelaide believe that the duck like creature may help us better understand ovarian cancer in human women.

According to Dr Frank Grutzner, who is an Adelaide based geneticist, DNA mapping performed upon the platypus shows an interesting relationship between their sex chromosomes and the DNA sequence “We’ve identified DNA on the sex chromosomes of the platypus that is similar to the DNA that is affected in ovarian cancer and other diseases of reproduction like male infertility,” Dr Grutzner says.

“Cancers often show a large number of DNA changes and it is difficult to decide which ones are important for the development of the disease. The comparison with distantly related species like platypus helps us in identifying important DNA sequences that have been conserved by evolution over millions of years.

“We are excited by the fact that the analysis of the platypus genome gives us new directions in investigating the molecular basis of ovarian cancer.”

Ovarian cancer is the most lethal of gynecological cancers and in many cases has no known cause. It primarily affects women over 50 but many cases have been reported in women far younger.

As ovarian cancer shows no real definitive symptoms in the early stages of the disease it is often not diagnosed until it has already begun to spread to other areas of the body, making  treatment far more difficult and less effective. Failure to be able to detect the disease in its early stages is part of the reason that there is still approximately a 50% mortality rate amongst women diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The kinds of leaps in early detection made in breast cancer that have improved the survival rates dramatically in the last 20 years have yet to happen for ovarian cancer victims.

That is something that the authors of this new research hope one day that their findings will help to change. Says Associate Professor Martin Oehler who is an Gynaecological Oncologist at Royal Adelaide Hospital and co author of the study “We hope this sort of research might one day lead to the development of an early detection test and more effective therapies against ovarian cancer,” Dr Oehler says.