Leukemia treatments often leave girls infertile, but a procedure developed by researchers at the University of Michigan working with mice is a step toward restoring their ability to be biological mothers.
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Ovarian follicles are the "nests" that carry eggs and support them to grow and become viable. The researchers demonstrated that they could dramatically improve the rate at which follicles develop mature eggs by surrounding the follicles with adipose-derived adult stem cells in a 3D scaffold that mimics the environment of the ovary.

Adipose-derived stem cells can be obtained from readily available fat tissue in adults.
The researchers point out that utilizing this approach in women is a ways off, but it could offer hope for many.

"Once a patient is cancer-free and they want biologically related children, we hope we'll be able to take their ovarian follicles, grow them in vitro and obtain healthy eggs for these young, otherwise healthy women," said Ariella Shikanov, U-M associate professor of biomedical engineering.

The described approach increased follicle survival from less than 5 percent to between 42 percent and 86 percent depending on the size of the follicle. The research was recently published in Stem Cell Research & Therapy Journal.

"This is a huge step toward being able to preserve the fertility of women and girls undergoing chemotherapy and radiation for cancer since those treatments are toxic to the follicles," said Claire Tomaszewski, a U-M doctoral student in biomedical engineering and member of the research team.
At this time, a young female leukemia patient's hope for carrying and delivering a biologically related child is freezing ovarian tissue prior to treatment, and hoping technology can eventually make follicle growth and maturation a viable procedure.
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And historically, attempts to grow human follicles into eggs in two-dimensional petri dishes have failed.
"A follicle is a three-dimensional structure, which becomes a pancake, not the spherical structure surrounded by supportive cells, when placed on a flat surface in a dish," Shikanov said. "As a result, it loses the contact between the supportive cells and the germs cells and then it fails to grow."

Denmark has one of highest incidences of cervical cancer in the Western world. But once a person has turned 65, they are no longer automatically screened - even though older women are in fact those who have the highest mortality. This is shown by new research from Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital.

"Cervical cancer has become known as 'a young women's disease'. But it's a myth that it only affects young people. In fact, the mortality rate among women above the age of 65 is 25-30 per cent higher than previously thought," says medical doctor and postdoc Anne Hammer from the Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital.

Anne Hammer is behind the new study which has just been published in the scientific journal Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavia. The researchers looked at cervical cancer mortality rates in Denmark between 2002-2015 and found that the over 65s stood out here. For example, the mortality rate was five times higher among woman aged 75-79 compared to those aged 40-45.

Advanced cancer
The research results support a study from November 2018 in which Anne Hammer and her research colleagues found that older women were very often diagnosed so late that the cancer was already too big to be surgically removed. In such cases patients are instead treated with radiotherapy and chemotherapy - a treatment that is associated with side effects such as pain and urination and defecation discomfort.
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More than half of the older women with cervical cancer who had followed the screening programme on a regular basis until it expired are diagnosed with cancer that is so advanced that surgery is no longer possible.

"When people are screened, the cancer can be discovered in its initial stages or at such an early stage that surgical treatment is still possible. This significantly reduces the risk of dying," says Anne Hammer.