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Updated: May 11, 2026

Murine Model for Non-invasive Imaging to Detect and Monitor Ovarian Cancer Recurrence
Published on: November 2, 2014
The hen as a model of ovarian cancer
Patricia A Johnson1, James R Giles
1Department of Animal Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. pat.johnson@cornell.edu
Abstract:
The domestic laying hen is the only non-human animal that spontaneously develops ovarian cancer with a high prevalence. Hens ovulate prolifically, and this has made the hen intuitively appealing as a model of this disease in light of epidemiological evidence that ovulation rate is highly correlated with the risk of human ovarian cancer. As in women, ovarian cancer in the hen is age-related and it is also grossly and histologically similar to that in humans. In both women and hens, the cancer metastasizes to similar tissues with an accumulation of ascites fluid. Some aggressive ovarian cancers in women arise from cells in the oviduct; this is intriguing because ovarian cancers in the hen express an oviductal protein that is normally absent in the ovary.
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