Our highlights of 2019

April saw our Team OCA London Marathon runners taking part in a challenge of a lifetime, raising £36,126.88. Their incredible efforts will help fund work at the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre and beyond. A huge thank you to the team for their hard work and all of the friends and family of our runners who generously donated. 

Could you be part of Team OCA in 2020? Whether you want to cycle, run, walk or even skydive, we guarantee there's a challenge for you. Find out more.

8th May was World Ovarian Cancer Day and this year 160 of our incredible supporters handed out 33,000 white roses with symptoms cards attached in 25 locations across the UK. Each rose represented a woman living with the disease, acting as a symbol of hope for a world without ovarian cancer.

We also saw politicians (including Prime Minister Theresa May) in England, Scotland and Wales uniting behind the campaign. They wore white roses and pledged their support for earlier diagnosis. Find out more.

The 14th HHMT took place in September 2019 in the UK. The theme was immunotherapy, a promising new treatment that is already being used to treat advanced melanoma and kidney cancer to great effect and which we hope can have a similar impact for women with ovarian cancer. The conference is organised by Ovarian Cancer Action and takes place every four years. We bring together the world’s leading ovarian cancer experts to discuss and debate what we need to do to make ovarian cancer a survivable disease. We believe that by collaborating on an international scale, we will reach our goals quicker. Find out more.

At October's Research Awards we presented the projects awarded our 2019 research grants and the talented scientists behind them. We were also treated to a hilarious and moving performance from the talented Rosa Hesmondhalgh aka Madame Ovary, whose ovarian cancer diagnosis aged 23 led to her writing a sell-out one-woman Edinburgh show.

The event also recognised the efforts of our incredible fundraisers, without who our work would not be possible. It is thanks to the continuing generosity of supporters like you that we have been able to fund almost £12.3 million of ovarian cancer research over the last 15 years. Find out more about the research your support helps fund.

In October we launched our new campaign to raise awareness and funding for future research. 

Voiced by Kate Winslet, who lost her mother to ovarian cancer, and with music from Birdy, our campaign seeks put ovarian cancer in the spotlight like never before, and bring it the level of attention it has always deserved. We’re funding the next generation of research so these girls and their millions of contemporaries will face much better prospects than their mothers, aunts and grandmothers. Find out more about the campaign and read a tribute to the incredible woman behind it.