New artificial ovaries for preserving fertility in women with cancer
- by Valerie Santiago
- in Medical
- — Jul 4, 2018
Prepubertal girls or women who need urgent treatment before they produce eggs, rely on ovarian tissue, which contains thousands of immature eggs in fluid-filled sacs called follicles, to be preserved instead with the aim of transplanting it after treatment.
The artificial ovary will be frozen until time for replacement in the woman's body (after recovery from cancer is complete.) The theory is that the eggs will then mature and release from the follicles naturally, prompted by the woman's normal hormonal cycle.
Artificial ovaries bring new hopes for young cancer patients, as a team of Danish researchers pointing at the novel treatment that they hope one day will be for such patients who can not conceive naturally. 'With the evidence they've shown, I think there's a reasonable chance it will, ' he said.
More news: Tina Turner's son, Craig Turner, dies at 59The "groundbreaking" experiment was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Barcelona on Monday and is due to be published as a study in a peer-reviewed journal.
An artificial ovary may allow cancer patients to preserve their fertility, according to Danish researchers exploring a process in which early-stage cells can develop into functional ovarian follicles, CNN reported.
In their recent experiment, the scientists took ovarian follicles and tissue from patients before they received cancer treatment and proceeded to remove the cancerous cells from the collected tissue, filling up the gaps with a "scaffold" made up of proteins and collagen. The researchers seeded this structural matrix with early-stage follicles.
More news: Dramatic footage released of emaciated Thai boys in cave"The beauty of this is that numerous women who are having ovarian grafts can go and get pregnant naturally, and don't need to go through IVF". Brison, who was not involved in the study, noted that the use of decellularized scaffolds is common in regenerative medicine, where tissues derived from stem cells are transplanted back into patients.
This is an "exciting" technique, but still requires testing in humans, experts said. This scaffold she explained originates from the woman's own tissues or from donated tissues.
But certain cancers, such as ovarian or leukemia, can invade the ovarian tissue itself and then be reintroduced into the woman's body. Although the risk is quite low, yet women with specific kinds of cancer could not get this treatment.
More news: White House Says 'Great Momentum' on North Korea; Intel Indicates NotSpeaking to The Guarian, Pors said: "This is the first proof that we can actually support these egg cells. It's an important step along the road". It could take five to 10 years of work before artificial ovaries are ready for human trials, she added.
