What is the Oncofertility Consortium's current project for males?
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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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Okay, so the Oncofertility Consortium really has a series of options for both men and women. So for men, the traditional option is for semen cryopreservation, and so the issue for pubertal boys and men is to be navigated appropriately to a place where they can bank their sperm. Now in young cancer patients, sometimes they’re not able to bank sperm, and this is a consequence of the cancer already impacting the reproductive axis.
In the case of a man’s inability to bank sperm based on the fact that the cancer has already impacted the reproductive axis, we can offer them a testes biopsy that allows us to acquire a small sample of the testes and identify small numbers of sperm that may be resident within the testes.