Fertility Preservation For Women: Penn Fertility Care Participates In The Oncofertility Consortium

Main Category: Fertility
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 05 Nov 2007 - 18:00 PDT

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Advances in cancer detection and treatment have progressed greatly throughout the past 40 years enabling more people to live longer lives. However, for survivors who had cancer before or during their reproductive years, infertility may be an unfortunate reality; as all of the standard therapies for cancer, including surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy can have a negative affect on fertility.

When diagnosed with cancer, men have the option of freezing sperm for future use, but to date, women do not have the same reproductive choices - nor do they know definitively what the effect of treatment will be on future fertility. This group of cancer patients continues to look for ways to preserve their fertility and their ability to have children.

Currently a woman can only preserve her fertility by freezing embryos created from a partner's or donor's sperm. Penn Fertility Care is working to find improved and effective fertility preservation options for women. Penn researchers are part of the Oncofertility Consortium, a consortium of scientists looking for novel ways to preserve eggs and fertility in female cancer patients.

As a part of this groundbreaking interdisciplinary program, Penn researchers are performing studies that will help the team learn more about a women's fertility potential after chemotherapy and identify women who may benefit from treatment.

- About the Oncofertility Consortium
- Oncofertility Clinical Trials at Penn
- Oncofertility Consortium Goals

The Oncofertility Consortium's objective is to enable oncofertility medical specialists, scientists and scholars to, for the first time, provide viable options to women with cancer and other fertility-threatening diseases, learn more about the nature and processes of follicle development and better understand human relationships between health, disease and interventions that can protect options for future fertility.

- Help for Cancer Patients to Access Fertility Preservation Treatments
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap for Medical Research press release

University of Pennsylvania Health System