What is the Oncofertility Consortium's current project for females?
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Teresa K. Woodruff, Ph.D.
The Watkins Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Director, The Oncofertility Consortium
Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University
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Now if a young woman either doesn’t have time because of the cancer treatment sequelae or if she doesn’t wish to go through hormonal stimulation, and doesn’t wish to create eggs or embryos, her option is to either do nothing and wait until after the chemotherapeutics or radiation treatment is done and see if she resumes natural cyclicity. If she doesn’t, she could adopt a child and expand her family options. Or the third option, is that she can, at the time of diagnosis, immediately opt for a laparoscopic technique that allows an ovary to be removed. And this ovary is removed, again, prior to the cancer treatment, she retains the other ovary, and this ovary can then be cryopreserved in small pieces and that material is then available for her later use, when she survives the cancer.
The utility of that cryopreserved ovary is either to use it as a transplant back to the woman after she survives, and in fact there has been a live birth from tissue transplant from a woman with cancer. The downside to that technology is that you have the risk of reseeding the cancer that you’ve just survived.
So, the other option that we’re working on is to isolate the individual follicles, which is the functional unit of the ovary, and grow or mature them completely in vitro to develop a mature egg. That egg can then be fertilized by the woman’s partner at the time she’s ready to have her family, and this could be five or ten years down the line, and then she has an embryo that can be transplanted and ready for her use.
Now this latter technology is still in the research stages. We’ve had live healthy birth in mice and we offer this as an option to young women because the technology is moving forward. And so, we think when these women are ready to have their families, this technology will be mature. So for a young woman who can’t wait, or doesn’t wish to go through hormonal treatments, this represents a good option for them to spare their fertility for their later use.