Hope for young cancer patients
WASHINGTON — Scientists are closing in on a way to help young boys undergoing cancer treatment preserve their future fertility — and the proof is the first monkey born from the experimental technology.
More and more people are surviving childhood cancer, but nearly 1 in 3 will be left infertile from the chemotherapy or radiation that helped save their life.
When young adults are diagnosed with cancer, they can freeze sperm, eggs or embryos ahead of treatment. But children diagnosed before puberty can’t do that because they’re not yet producing mature eggs or sperm.
“Fertility issues for kids with cancer were ignored” for years, said University of Pittsburgh reproductive scientist Kyle Orwig. “Many of us dream of growing up and having our own families. We hope our research will help these young patients to do that.” in hopes that when transplanted back later, the immature eggs would resume development. It’s considered experimental, but some births have been reported. Now some hospitals bank ovarian tissue from girls, too.
Surgery involving the boys’ testicular tissue is less invasive, noted Orwig, who also is researching ways to reinsert sperm-producing stem cells where they belong rather than the more roundabout technique.
Meanwhile, “it’s important for parents to know about this,” said Christine Hanlon of Holiday, Fla., who took her son Dylan to Pittsburgh to have his tissue stored when he was newly diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma at age 9.
Today Dylan is a healthy teen, and no one knows if he’ll ever need the stored tissue, one of more than 200 samples Orwig’s study has preserved. But Hanlon was thrilled to learn the research is moving along, just in case.
“You lose part of your childhood in cancer treatment,” Hanlon said. “If there was a chance I could help him have normalcy in his future, with the potential of having a family if that’s what he decided to do, I wanted to be able to.”