Ovarian cancer is difficult to detect.

There are no signs that it’s there. There is no screening test. Researchers don’t even know the cancer’s exact cause.

Combined, these factors make ovarian cancer one of the most lethal cancers in women, according to Ken Anderson, professor and research extension specialist.

It’s an issue that the Department of Poultry Science has been working toward solving, Anderson said.

Researchers from the department have been looking at poultry — especially chickens — to see if there are any protemic markers that indicate cancer.

“Ovarian cancer is an asymptomatic cancer until stages three or four,” Anderson said.

His research team, which studies and tests birds in the animal wing of Scott Hall, is looking for signs that can help detect the cancer at an earlier stage.

The department uses chickens, Anderson said, because the bird is a good model for spontaneous cancers, which occur in about 15 to 34 percent of the birds.

“Birds suffer from a lot of maladies,” Anderson said. “It’s a part of life.”

Researchers keep 200 to 250 chickens — a strain of lay hens called leghorn that are two to four years of age — in “normal husbandry conditions.” They are kept in cages and are fed a special diet that is protected from parasites, Anderson said, and human traffic in the laboratory is limited.

“We try to protect them as much as we can,” he said.

While these chickens are studied, they are not used for any other research. From age 2, they spend the rest of their lives in

“You can’t use the birds multiple times,” Anderson said. “Time doesn’t stop for anyone.”

During observation, researchers routinely take samples of each chicken’s blood. When the chicken dies of natural causes — the average lifespan of a chicken is about four years, researchers will perform a necropsy to determine the cause of death. If a chicken died of cancer, they will be able to look at records, searching for a common protemic marker that could indicate cancer.

The department has collaborated with Northwestern University’s medical school and Duke University’s Mayo Clinic. Both have performed pre-clinical type trials, he said. It also works closely with the chemistry department, which is trusted with examining the blood samples.

And through this collaboration, the department has begun to move closer toward finding protemic indicators.

“We’ve found that caloric restrictions reduce incidence in cancers by 6 percent,” Anderson said. They have also found that p53 and CA125, two proteins, are “critical components that are present in different levels when cancers are developing.”

These markers, he said, move in a predictable pattern and can be used as cancer-determining indicators.

Although the department is working toward the goal of finding markers in chickens that scientists and doctors will be able to look for in women, Anderson said the research isn’t anything new, and isn’t unique to N.C. State.

“The uniqueness comes in what we’re trying to measure and how it’s measured,” he said. “It’s important work. I hope we can develop early detection methodologies that will save lives.”

This research isn’t the only ongoing project in the department. According to Sam Pardue, department head and professor of poultry science, consumers also benefit from the department’s research “by having a readily available, low cost, high-quality protein source of poultry meat and eggs.”

Anderson is also working on the North Carolina Layer Performance and Management Tests, which studies different chicken strains and husbandry conditions to develop a more productive and healthy chicken. It is the only one of its kind left in the world.

Tria Metzler, a senior in animal science and researcher, has also worked with birds in the animal wing. Last summer, she worked with samples of pigeon aortas from New Hampshire and created two populations of pigeons — one that would spontaneously have a heart attack after aging a few months, and one that would never have a heart attack no matter what.

They used this model and applied it to humans, looking to prevent multiple sclerosis.

This isn’t the kind of work either Metzler or Anderson envisioned when they entered college. Metzler became interested in the subject by chance the summer before her freshman year, and Anderson had already finished his degree before he started this type of research.

“It’s not something I thought I’d be doing,” Anderson said. “I never thought the chicken would be used in biomedical research. It keeps life interesting.”