Cancer drug 'clock' shock

07 December 2016 - 09:47 By ©The Telegraph
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Scientists say a new therapy could potentially save the lives of people who are critically ill with colon or liver disease and possibly some cancers.
Scientists say a new therapy could potentially save the lives of people who are critically ill with colon or liver disease and possibly some cancers.
Image: AFP Relaxnews

Infertile women have been offered new hope: scientists have found that a common cancer drug triggers the development of new eggs, previously thought impossible.

In a discovery hailed as "astonishing", researchers at the University of Edinburgh proved that it is possible to reverse the clock and coax the ovaries back into a prepubescent state, producing new eggs.

Women are born with all their eggs, which is why conceiving becomes harder with age - the eggs grow old, become damaged and eventually run out entirely.

But scientists noticed that women who had undergone chemotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma with a drug combination known as ABVD had up to 10 times more eggs than healthy women. Far from damaging the chance of having a baby, the cancer drugs seem to improve their fertility.

The researchers speculate that the shock of chemotherapy was triggering stem cells in the ovaries into producing new follicles, the hollow hair-like structures that each produce an egg.

Lead researcher Evelyn Telfer, of the University of Edinburgh's School of Biological Sciences, said: "We were astonished when we saw what had happened to the tissue. It looked like prepubescent tissue with a high density of follicles and clustering that you don't normally see in an adult.

"We knew that ABVD does not have a sterilising effect like some other cancer drugs but to find new eggs being made, in such huge numbers - that was very surprising.

"I think it's a pretty big deal. It is the first time that we have seen new follicles being formed within the ovary. It is only a small number of women, but it is significant that the same effect was seen in all of the women on ABVD," Telfer said.

Scientists analysed samples of ovarian tissue donated by 14 women who had undergone chemotherapy and compared them to tissue taken from 12 healthy women.

They found the tissue from eight of the cancer patients who had been treated with ABVD had between four and 10 times more eggs compared with tissue from women who received a different chemotherapy or healthy women of a similar age.

The ovarian tissue was healthy, appearing similar to that from young women.

The study was published in Human Reproduction.

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