Letitia Linke’s death from ovarian cancer could have been avoided if there was an early test | Jess Adamson
A mother’s haunting realisation as her daughter was dying from a disease that kills one woman every 10 hours has spurred a desperate fight for a much-needed early detection test.
When Madelyn Duckmanton was a teenager in the 1960’s, her mother Margaret, was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
The 34-year-old was feeling rundown, so a GP referred her to the Royal Adelaide Hospital where a cervical screening test was among a series of tests done.
It was a terrible shock but thankfully, they’d caught the disease in its early stages.
The young mother was treated, cured and lived to be 87 when she died from dementia.
Almost 50 years later, Madelyn’s daughter Letitia Linke, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
She too was 34, but tragically, couldn’t be cured and didn’t get the chance to live to 87.
Letitia died 4 short years after being diagnosed at Stage 4c. She was just 38.
Letitia was fun, beautiful and full of life.
She fell in love with dashing Yorke Peninsula farmer Paul Linke and together they had two boys, Ollie and Tommy. They were 12 and 11 when they had to say goodbye.
Letitia Linke could have been saved if there was an early detection test for ovarian cancer, but there’s not and too many women continue to succumb to this silent killer.
The statistics are terrifying.
Around 1815 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer in Australia each year.
1000 Australian women die from ovarian cancer each year, one every 10 hours.
59 per cent of women are diagnosed at Stage 3 or 4. They have a 29 per cent chance of surviving to five years.
Only 19 per cent of women are diagnosed at Stage 1 – usually by chance or accident – and their survival rate is a much brighter 90 per cent.
Mammograms, PSA checks, faecal tests and Pap smears have dramatically improved the survival rates of breast, prostate, bowel and cervical cancer – yet in 2025, there is still no early screening tool for ovarian cancer.
It needs to change, and fast.
The symptoms can be vague and common. Abdominal and pelvic pain, bloating, fatigue and changes in bowel habits. So many of us dismiss them as part of everyday life.
Professor Martin Oehler, Head of Gynaecological Oncology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, says many women feel guilt when they’re diagnosed, blaming themselves for not recognising the signs earlier.
“It’s very sad to see when there are women who live a normal life and suddenly are diagnosed with this advanced, deadly disease,” he says.
“It’s a horrible disease and because it’s detected so late, the outcome is so poor.
“I’ve been working in this field for 25 years and it’s just devastating to see that we haven’t made any progress at all in the early detection field, zero. It’s highly unsatisfactory.”
Professor Oehler, also a researcher at the University of Adelaide, together with University of South Australia’s Professor Peter Hoffmann, are trying desperately to make the breakthrough.
For more than a decade, they’ve been working to highlight the potential of circulating autoantibodies, as novel, sensitive biomarkers for the early detection of ovarian cancer.
Autoantibodies are amplified by an immune response, making them more abundant and detectable in peripheral blood, even in early-stage disease.
They believe a test that looks for antibodies produced by a woman’s immune system, against the tumour cells, rather than looking for something secreted by the tumour itself, could hold the key.
Using advanced proteomic technologies that analyse thousands of proteins and peptides in the blood, Professors Hoffmann and Oehler have identified a panel of these tumour-associated autoantibodies.
In early studies, this panel was able to distinguish early-stage ovarian cancer patients from healthy women with striking accuracy.
“If we make this test work, we could detect ovarian cancer so early that most women who undergo screening would be cured,” Professor Hoffmann says.
Much of their work so far has been funded by the Letitia Linke Research Foundation, set up by Madelyn in 2020.
To advance and optimise the test for clinical use in a larger patient group, the pair need a substantial funding boost of $3-5 million. And they need it urgently.
“It’s absolutely critical and it’s what’s called the Valley of Death,” Professor Hoffmann says.
“If you don’t get that funding and you can’t do the prospective studies you will never get it approved by the TGA and get it out for screening women.
“It’s probably a 3-5 year project to get it approved by the TGA.”
South Australia’s medical research is world class, and we must find a way to continue this research.
Biomedical research is high-risk investment with no guaranteed outcome, but without bold exploration like this, we’ll continue to lose women like Letitia Linke.
Madelyn Duckmanton, a medical scientist herself, always knew her daughter would need a miracle to survive.
Night after night, she pored over trials and research in the hope of finding a treatment that could save her.
“The realisation of the huge hole this beautiful young woman would leave was almost unbearable,” she says.
“I know her greatest fear was leaving her precious boys to grow up without her love, guidance and protection, it was unfathomably sad as a mother to watch.”
By late 2017, she knew time and hope were running out. It was to be the family’s last Christmas together.
“She felt like a burden on Paul and the boys and wanted them to be free to get on with their lives,” Madelyn says.
“It broke my heart to hear her talk like this however right to the end it was her boys that were the most important thing to her.
“On the morning of Wednesday the 1st of August 2018, Letitia passed away peacefully and I held my beautiful daughter in my arms for the last time.”
She’d endured four years of gruelling treatment, endless rounds of chemotherapy, numerous surgeries and hospital admissions and endless disappointments.
Letitia made an enormous impact as she fought to stay, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars and sharing her story around the country as an Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation and Ovarian Cancer Australia Ambassador.
Madelyn took up the fight where her daughter left off, holding an annual Gala Ball to fundraise, the first just six weeks after Letitia passed away.
The Letitia Linke Research Foundation has raised more than half a million dollars, all of it going towards early detection and personalised cancer treatment research.
It’s an incredible community effort but there’s a critical gap in funding for this insidious and cruel disease.
The Government and private sector must step up and contribute to accelerate research and enable discoveries for the sake of thousands of Australian women and girls.
It shouldn’t be left to patient ambassadors like Letitia Linke to find the money, they’re simply not here long enough.
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