Cancer
Treatment strategies
Although the number of children surviving cancer continues to increase significantly, studies show that cancer treatments can lower the probability of becoming a father due to damage to the reproductive system. Currently, no clinical options are available to preserve fertility in young boys, who do not yet produce sperm to be stored.
New research by Dr Federica Lopes, Lecturer in Reproductive Medicine at the University of Dundee, aims to preserve fertility in young boys who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment.
Two centres in the UK (Edinburgh and Oxford) are collecting testis biopsies from children with cancer before the onset of chemotherapy, with ongoing research looking at strategies to restore and protect fertility using these tissues.
Previous work by Dr Lopes has shown that an important type of cell within the testis are damaged by chemotherapy. This population of stem cells give rise to the sperm throughout adult life and, after chemotherapy drug exposure, activate a number of genes that are involved in the death of these important cells.
The aim now, for Dr Lopes, is to see whether promoting specific signals within these cells will rebalance the response to chemotherapy, so that cells proliferate rather than dying out – hence preserving fertility.
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