By: Lauren Ataman-Millhouse -
Dr. Francesca Duncan and her colleagues recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
This paper "mTORC1/2 Inhibition Preserves Ovarian Function and Fertility during Genotoxic Chemotherapy" is significant for the following reasons: "A major unresolved issue for premenopausal women undergoing chemotherapy is infertility due to the loss of nonrenewable ovarian primordial follicles. We show that pharmacologic down-regulation of the mammalian/mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway during chemotherapy in a mouse model prevents activation of primordial follicles, preserves ovarian function, and maintains normal fertility using clinically available inhibitors of mTOR complex (C)1 and mTORC1/2. These findings represent a feasible pharmacologic approach for preservation of ovarian function and fertility during treatment with conventional chemotherapy."
Click here to read the full paper.
Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine press release regarding the publication is available here.