CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour, 67, Says Her Ovarian Cancer Recurrence Is ‘Very Well Managed’

“I obviously had all of the relevant organs removed, but it came back a couple of times in a lymph node.”

It’s important to note that recurrence of ovarian cancer after initial treatment is common. Research published in the Gland Surgery medical journal reports that it occurs in nearly 25% of early-stage cases and over 80% of more advanced cases.

Amanpour, who also hosts CNN’s show “The Amanpour Hour” on weekends, wrote alongside a video clip she shared on Instagram of the podcast, “Glad to be able to talk about ovarian cancer, which I’m managing for the third time, with my oncologist, Dr. Angela George, from the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour)

She added, “We discuss the importance of listening to our bodies, advances in treatment, and living with what can be a permanent condition. Thanks to Hannah Vaughan Jones for hosting us on Changing the Ovarian Cancer Story, a podcast from the World Ovarian Cancer Coalition.”

In the footage, Amanpour admitted she went public with her prior diagnosis in 2021 because she was out of work for four weeks, prompting viewers to question where she was and whether she’d been fired.

“I decided when I got back in front of the camera after four weeks, which included the surgery and a couple of weeks of recuperation before I started chemotherapy, I decided to say something because I actually wanted to do a service … not just to my viewers, but also to those who might be in a similar situation,” she continued.

“And I wanted to say what had happened to me, and I wanted to say listen to your body because part of the reason I got such quick care was because I’d listened to my body and went straight to the doctors.”

Amanpour, who received her first ovarian cancer diagnosis in May 2021, also stressed the importance of support from loved ones and friends, because the battle is “the state of mind.”

“To have all these people who just literally every day were asking me how I was, how they could help—the community is actually vital and I’m just so very lucky that I had that.”

She admitted that her diagnosis came about after she had missed one of her annual gyno appointments due to the “on-again, off-again Covid lockdowns.”

Amanpour said she had routine checkups as her late aunt had endometrial cancer.

“I missed one [checkup] during the lockdown, and then I started to feel a pain in my side, and it wasn’t a urinary tract infection … it wasn’t anything I was familiar with, and it really did hurt, especially when I went to the loo and tried to urinate. So I thought something was not right,” she explained.

After not getting any answers, she pushed her doctors for an ultrasound, which prompted them to discover she had stage 2 ovarian cancer.

Amanpour also explained on an episode of the “World Ovarian Cancer Coalition, “Every three months, I would go and get my CT scan and my blood test, and the general monitoring, which is how I found it the second time and how I found it the third time.

“The fact that I’m monitored all the time is a superb insurance policy.”

Recounting her shocking diagnoses, Amanpour also told People Magazine, “I’ve spent my career covering genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq—all really dangerous stuff… And I’ve survived all that. But this is very different.”

Amanpour’s Ovarian Cancer Journey

Amanpour’s cancer was ultimately detected during a routine check-up when doctors identified a cyst on her right ovary, roughly the size of a grapefruit.

The diagnosis was stage 2 ovarian cancer, a condition often referred to as “the cancer that whispers” because its symptoms are subtle and easily ignored.

Common indicators include bloating, pelvic discomfort, and changes in bowel patterns, but these signs are frequently dismissed. In many cases, the cancer begins in the fallopian tubes before spreading to the ovaries, which complicates early detection.

Recounting her treatment plan, she told People Magazine, “I did chemo that took however long, six cycles. I put on an ice cap in order to make sure that I didn’t lose too much hair and I didn’t lose too much hair. I kept my bangs, you know, the fringe and all of the rest of it. I said, ‘This chemo must know I’m on television, so for me that was lucky.”

Since her cancer came back, she has undergone immunotherapy, which has successfully helped her achieve remission once more. This treatment works by boosting the immune system’s ability to identify and target cancer cells.

Regarding her experience with immunotherapy, the details remain unclear, but Amanpour shares that, “I have no side effects. I take pills every day, and then now every six weeks, I go into the hospital and have an infusion of another drug that goes with my particular cocktail of immunotherapy.”

Understanding What Happens During Ovarian Cancer Recurrence

Eighty percent of women with ovarian cancer enter remission. However, during the next five years, 70 to 80 percent of those women may have a “recurrence,” when the cancer comes back, according to Dr. Beth Karlan, a gynecologic oncologist at the UCLA Medical Center whose skill as a clinician is noted among her colleagues. The probability of recurrence is, without question, daunting, but there are exciting new options for treatment.

To explain what’s happening in your body in the most basic terms, recurrence often occurs because some cancer cells are left behind after treatment, and, over time, they grow larger. Your cancer may have specific features, which means these cells just didn’t respond well to treatment.

How To Manage A Recurrence Of Ovarian Cancer

Women dealing with recurrence will likely need to go through chemotherapy or surgery again. And there may well be a decision to add a drug that cuts off the blood supply to tumors (Bevacizumab) or a class of drugs called PARP Inhibitors, which help prevent cancer cells from repairing themselves at the genetic level.

According to Dr. Karlan, the type of treatment recommended for recurrence can depend on a number of factors:

• The time period within which the cancer recurred
• The kind of chemotherapy the woman underwent in the past
• Side effects that came as a result of past treatments
• The length of time between the last treatment the woman underwent and the recurrence
• The specific mutations and molecular features of your cancer

If a woman’s time between remission and recurrence is more than six months, then the ovarian cancer is categorized as “platinum-sensitive” (that is, responsive to a platinum-based chemotherapy treatment), and that patient will be treated with chemotherapy and another platinum-based drug.

However, if the recurrence time happens less than six months into remission, the ovarian cancer is classified as “platinum-resistant.” At that point, women are usually treated with another type of chemotherapy and encouraged to enter a clinical trial. Alternatively, women might be platinum refractory, which refers to a disease that grows while the patient is on chemotherapy and has a particularly poor prognosis.

There is also growing data to support the idea that PARP Inhibitors, the class of drug that inhibits cancer cells from repairing their DNA, can benefit a wide swath of women. PARP inhibitors are especially beneficial for women who have undergone genetic testing to discover that they have a mutation called BRCA.

WATCH: How your ovarian cancer responds to certain types of chemotherapies guides your future treatments.

PARP inhibitors Eligibility for Recurrence

For women with ovarian cancer who have had a recurrence and responded to platinum-based chemotherapy, Lynparza, Zejula, and another PARP inhibitor called Rubraca (rucaparib) are FDA-approved for use as a maintenance therapy, regardless of whether a woman has a BRCA mutation or HRD.

For some women who have had prior chemotherapy treatments, Rubraca, Zejula, or Lynparza may also be options. These uses are based on factors such as the number of prior therapies and the BRCA mutation or HRD.

The different PARP inhibitors do have some varying side effects, which women and their doctors need to evaluate carefully. It’s important to ask your doctor if he or she has experience managing the side effects of the various PARPs.

Other Tools to Fight Ovarian Cancer Recurrence

Oncologists can also use a tactic to determine if there is something called “microsatellite instability” in the tumor, which can indicate whether immunotherapy is an option, according to Dr. Karlan. Trying to activate the immune system to fight cancer through one of the approved immunotherapy drugs is not yet proving very effective for ovarian cancer, but there are interesting clinical trials going on that combine immunotherapy with other agents.

Clinical Trials

In the rounds of treatment after a recurrence, Karlan says that experienced doctors look at clinical trials to see if a woman’s disease has some of the features that might make her a potential candidate for novel agents or combinations.

Participating in a clinical trial can provide benefits while also providing vital information to the entire scientific community about potential future treatments.

Repeated Treatment is Possible

Dr. Karlan explains that oncologists may well treat women whose cancer comes back “three, four, five, six, seven or eight times,” and often it’s during treatment for their fifth or sixth recurrence that they might go back into remission.

This repeated treatment is possible as a result of a doctor’s careful analysis of a woman’s prior treatments, the time between treatments, and analysis of their tumors.

Probability of Recurrence

Determining the probability that a woman’s cancer will recur depends on the stage at which they were originally diagnosed. According to most data, when diagnosed, women with stage one ovarian cancer have a 10 percent chance of recurrence, women in stage two have a 30 percent chance of recurrence, and women in stage three have a 70 to 90 percent chance of recurrence. When your disease is given a stage four designation, unfortunately, there is a 90 to 95 percent chance of recurrence.

WATCH: Treating ovarian cancer.

New Treatment Options

In 2023, a drug called Elahere (generic name mirvetuximab soravtansine) was given emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Phase III clinical trials showed that the drug was effective at treating some patients who had become resistant to platinum-based chemotherapies.

The drug targets the folate receptor alpha (FRα) protein present on the tumor cell surface. The accelerated approval was based on a rigorous clinical trial called SORAYA, which showed effectiveness at suppressing cancer growth in at least one-third of patients.

The drug is expected to be given full approval in the U.S. after promising new data from another trial, MIRASOL, was released in May 2023.

The MIRASOL trial looked at how it performed compared to giving chemotherapy alone in patients with folate receptor alpha (FRα)-positive platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

In the trial, more than one-third of patients (36%) receiving Elahere (who had previously been treated with bevacizumab) experienced improved progression-free survival (how long a patient goes without their disease worsening), and more than one-fourth (26%) experienced improved overall survival (how long the patient lives).

In another, smaller group of patients who had not previously been treated with bevacizumab, progression-free survival was 34% better, and overall survival was 49% better than when patients received standard chemotherapy.

Genetic Testing Can Offer Valuable Information About Ovarian Cancer Risk

Questions for Your Doctor

If you have been diagnosed with ovarian cancer or recurrence of the disease and need guidance to further educate yourself on the disease and treatment, consider asking your doctor these questions.

•  What treatment options are available now?
• Would I benefit from chemotherapy, targeted therapy, hormone therapy, surgery, or radiation?
• Are there any clinical trials suitable for me?
• What are the goals of treatment now—cure, long-term control, or symptom relief?
• Do you recommend I get genetic testing for any gene mutations, such as the BRCA gene mutation?
• What are the possible side effects of the recommended treatment, and how can they be coped with?

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff

Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.

---