Every year, an estimated 76,000 young men and women in the United States are diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer that requires aggressive treatment. Their survival rates today are better than ever, thanks to more powerful and precise treatment methods using chemotherapy, radiation or surgery - or some combination of those therapies.

The downside to these life-saving treatments, however, is that patients who want to create children can be left with that ability impaired or destroyed, depending on the location of the cancer and the therapy needed.

For years, men who banked their sperm before beginning cancer treatments could still father children, but ova - the eggs produced by women - did not survive similar freezing techniques, so young women had no options for preserving their fertility.

Today, new techniques being tested at the Medical College of Wisconsin and at a handful of other sites around the country are providing some hope that female fertility can resume after cancer treatment, doctors says:"Although we can't promise them anything,we can now offer young women some hope for success in creating a child where there was none before."

How Cancer Treatments Can Affect Fertility
The very treatments that allow us to go on with our lives after cancer has been overcome can, in many cases, impair the fertility that brings new life.

For women undergoing radiation treatment to the lower abdomen, there is a risk that the radiation beams could damage or destroy their ovaries, depending on the size and location of tumor and the radiation dosage prescribed. When ovarian function is damaged or destroyed, women stop producing female hormones, go into menopause and lose their ability to bear children.

Depending on the patient's age, the type of chemotherapy prescribed and the dosage, chemotherapy drugs can damage or destroy ovaries while eradicating the malignant tumor.

With cancers that affect the female reproductive organs, the best treatment option may be surgery to remove those organs.

The Medical College 's clinical trial - now under way at Froedtert Hospital and Children's Hospital - offers a variety of methods designed to preserve or restore fertility in women and girls after cancer treatment.

Ovarian Tissue Banking
Another option is ovarian tissue banking, using minimally invasive outpatient laparoscopic surgery to remove a small amount of ovarian tissue before cancer treatment begins. The harvested tissue is frozen and stored until the patient and her physician determine it may be reimplanted.

"It's a very new technique," doctors says. "So far, there have been six reported cases in the world where, after the ovarian tissue has been reimplanted, the woman has resumed putting out hormones and releasing eggs."

Ovarian tissue banking has already produced fertilized embryos. In July 2004, the first successful human pregnancy was announced in Italy , where a woman is expected to give birth in October.

"We think the promise for human babies is encouraging, and with more cases, we expect to see more positive results." Producing a child can require additional medical intervention, such as in vitro fertilization or the use of a surrogate mother to carry the fertilized embryo to term.

Ovarian tissue banking may also be an appropriate fertility preservation option for women undergoing treatment for other diseases such as lupus and certain autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis that also carry the risk of loss of fertility.

What makes someone a good candidate for participation in the clinical trials? "It's highly individualized," doctors says. "Candidates for ovarian tissue banking and other fertility preservation methods undergoing clinical trials at the Medical College are carefully screened and reviewed by a committee." For patients selected for the trial, there is no surgeon's charge for the laparoscopic procedures or for the tissue preservation, but participants may be required to assume some of the hospital charges.