Phase II Study: Green Tea Intake for the Maintenance of Complete Remission in Women With Advanced Ovarian Carcinoma

Green tea is extracted from steam treated leaves, allowing the preservation of catechins, the active elements of the infusion. Catechins are recognized for their anti-cancer activity. Catechins act on the capacity of cancer to disseminate to other organs because of their anti-protease action. Proteases are proteins capable of digesting the cancer environment and facilitating the progression of cancer cells to blood vessels which will bring them to distant organs. We know that ovarian cancer responds well to the initial treatment of chemotherapy but tends to recur rapidly. We intend to provide green tea with higher concentrations of catechins to women with complete remission of their ovarian cancer in an attempt to delay cancer relapse. We also intend to identify, with molecular technologies, the proteases involved in ovarian cancer recurrence and response to catechins. Our objective is to test the hypothesis that green tea intake may delay ovarian cancer recurrence and to develop tools to predict which women will best benefit of the addition of green tea to their initial treatment.