Scientists from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have discovered a way to prevent death of immature ovarian eggs' death during chemotherapy.
Women diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment like chemotherapy and radiation often lose their fertility because their immature ovarian eggs die during the treatment. However, scientists from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have found the molecular pathway that can prevent the death of immature ovarian eggs due to chemotherapy, potentially preserving fertility and endocrine function.
The new development was successfully tested on female mice. The new drug is a mixture of a chemotherapy drug, imatinib mesylate with another chemotherapy drug cisplatin.
"This research advances the efforts to find a medical treatment to protect the fertility and hormone health of girls and young women during cancer treatment, " said So-Youn Kim, the lead investigator and a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Teresa Woodruff, chief of fertility preservation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in a press release.
The newly mixed drug stops the action of a protein known as Tap63 that causes a series of events resulting in the death of the immature eggs. Previous studies have stated that while imatinib mesylate is a fertility protecting drug, cisplatin is not. However, after the study and judging from the success of the newly mixed drug, Kim states that this conclusion could be wrong and both drugs are fertility protecting drugs. Currently Kim is working on mixing imatinib mesylate with other chemotherapy drugs to see if it has the same effects.
For the study, Kim and her colleagues covered ovaries from five-day-old mice with imatinib and cisplatin for 96 hours. The ovaries were then placed in a kidney capsule in the host mice to keep the ovaries alive. Two weeks later, the immature eggs were still alive. While imatinib was not able to prevent DNA damages caused by the cisplatin, the author stated that the eggs were able to recover and repair the damage over time.
