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The National Mall in Washington D.C. was the place to be for inquisitive minds this past weekend--the USA Science and Engineering Festival held there on Saturday and Sunday drew crowds of nearly 1 million people who took part in over 1,500 hands-on activities, exhibits, and science shows. Our...
The October 11, 2010 issue of TIME magazine highlighted the importance of fertility preservation for cancer patients. The article discussed the mission of the Oncofertility Consortium and interviewed a young cancer survivor, Holly, who underwent fertility preservation at Northwestern Memorial...
An image of a parthenote, courtesy of Alison Kim, PhD
An interdisciplinary team from the Oncofertility Consortium published a paper today in the journal Science on the intersection of politics and scientific research. The group, made up of a historian, a bioethicist, and scientists from the...
This upcoming November 12, 2010, the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the STAR Program (Survivors Taking Action & Responsibility) are hosting a regional conference in downtown Chicago, IL. The event, titled Cancer Survivorship 101: Educating Primary Care Providers in their...
On October 12, 2010 a special issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology will highlight the importance of adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer awareness. In an overview on AYA oncology, David M. Thomas, et al., emphasizes the “clear clinical need” for a new subfield of oncology. Issues that are...
I’m a huge football fan, so most Sundays in the fall and winter are spent watching games. Starting this past Sunday and running until the end of the month, all of the NFL teams will accent their uniforms and gear with pink, in support of the American Cancer Society’s breast cancer awareness...
The Oncofertility Consortium finds new ways to prevent life-saving cancer treatments from destroying fertility through multiple avenues of scientific research. But this emerging field does not live in isolation and the consortium addresses larger issues in oncofertility through discussions with...
This week, The Washington Post shed light on a section of the health care reform law that directly impacts breast cancer research in young women in terms of desired outcomes and available funding. Between 2010 and 2014, the law allocates 9 million dollars...
The fourth annual gathering of oncofertility specialists occurred this week at Northwestern University’s Prentice Women’s Hospital in Chicago, IL. More than 150 people from 24 states across the US and three countries joined in on two days of talks and workshops. The events ranged from seminars on ...
Many Americans have heard of the term “interdisciplinary research” but don’t really understand how that affects them on a daily basis. Interdisciplinary research crosses traditional professional boundaries. Within science, it incorporates researchers from departments as different as physics,...
A court ruling last week revived the long-running stem cell debate yet again. In 2001, President Bush allowed federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research on cell lines that were developed before 2001. After taking office, President Obama issued an executive order to remove such...
Many people have never heard of the term parthenote, the byproduct of a process called parthenogenesis. Parthenogenesis occurs when an egg becomes activated and starts dividing without sperm. While parthenogenesis happens frequently in many plants and vertebrate animals,...
In previous blogs, we discuss some of the currently available techniques in oncofertility, including sperm banking for men and ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC) for women. As one of the newer techniques, OTC allows women to have their ovaries removed, cryopreserved, and then reimplanted later....
In 2007, the first book about Oncofertility discussed many of the scientific and medical advances available to cancer patients wishing to preserve their fertility. Collaborators at the Oncofertility Consortium now examine the humanities and social science aspects of the field in the book ...
Receiving a cancer diagnosis is traumatizing. Your doctor runs some tests, possibly sends you to a specialist, and then tells you the bad news. Within a few days, you must process this life-changing information, decide on and receive fertility preservation, and start cancer therapy. But what...
Over the past decades, advances in fertility, such as in vitro fertilization, also increased reproductive options for female cancer patients. Prior tobeginning chemotherapy and radiation, patients can now freeze down their eggs or embryos to be used after beating the cancer. Unfortunately, these...
In 1990, Mary-Claire King, PhD made a groundbreaking discovery: she identified a gene that was similar in people with inherited forms of breast cancer. She identified this gene by examining families with rare forms of breast cancer, such as those occurring early in life, in both breasts, or among...
A recent article published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology used research from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) to facilitate research on long-term survivors of cancer diagnosed in childhood and adolescence. Specifically, the authors retrospectively looked at the fertility of male...
On April 13, 2010, Dave Look received the Northwestern University Information Technology (NUIT) Customer Champion Award based on his work with the Oncofertility Consortium and Dr. Teresa K. Woodruff. Dave's work is pivotal to the Oncofertility Consortium's success, as he helps to develop and...
The contents of the Oncofertility Consortium Blog are for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.