Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy Essay -- Health, Treatment

The progress in chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments have improved, such that the survival rate of cancer patients has increased, particularly among young females diagnosed in the early stages of cancer (Registries, 2010). While the priority for these patients was to prolong life, now the quality of life after treatment is of equal concern. Unfortunately, the toxicity of cancer treatments may lead to premature menopause and infertility (Brydoy, Fossa, Dahl, & Bjoro, 2007), As a result, various fertility preservation techniques have been developed in order to provide fertility preservation options for women who survived cancer. These include embryo cryopreservation, oocyte cryopreservation and most recently, ovarian tissue cryopreservation followed by grafting. Of these techniques, embryo cryopreservation is the most efficient and effective in restoring fertility (West, et al., 2009). However, retrieval of oocytes for IVF requires hormonal stimulation which may take 2-3 weeks or longer, and this may be too long for some patients to delay their treatments (Tao Tao & Valle, 2008). Additionally, embryo cryopreservation is not suitable for patients with hormone sensitive malignancies, such as breast cancer, or for young girls and adult females who have no partner and prefer not to use donor sperm. Oocyte cryopreservation avoids some of the disadvantages of embryo cryopreservation, such as the availability of a partner and the status of prepubertal girls, but the comparative low survival rate of frozen oocytes, their poor fertilization capacity and embryo development rate (Tao Tao & Valle, 2008) has directed researchers into other areas. They recognize that ovarian tissue cryopreservation could become a reasonable fertility prese... ... research model instead of some wild animals such as using domestic cats for researches instead of tigers and leopards. Among the felids (cat species), 69.3% out of 36 living wild cat species are classified as near threatened, vulnerable, endangered and critically endangered (Nowell, 2002). Domestic cats serve as a convenient research model for wild felids conservation since the folliculogenesis in cats takes about 7-13 days and the gestational length is approximately 60 days (Bristol-Gould & Woodruff, 2006). This research aims to develop successful vitrification and warming protocol for cat ovarian tissue and optimize in vitro follicle/oocytes maturation protocols in order to achieve mature, viable and functional cat oocytes. To achieve this, understanding the ovary anatomy and function, follicles, oocytes structure and the art of cryopreservation is important.