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Category: General

Bright Pink Visits the Oncofertility Consortium

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General
Tags: Advocate, BRCA
This past Monday, Sarah Halberstadt, the National Program Manager for the group Bright Pink came to visit us at the Oncofertility Consortium. Bright Pink is a not-for-profit organization that educates and supports young women who are at high-risk for breast and ovarian cancer. The members…
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Insurance Often Doesn’t Cover Fertility Preservation Costs

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General, Oncofertility
Tags: Egg Banking, Fertility Preservation, insurance, Sperm Banking
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…
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Stem Cell Transplants Increase the Need for Fertility Preservation

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General
Tags: Fertility Preservation, infertility
The mission of the Oncofertility Consortium is to advance and promote fertility preservation options for cancer patients. However, treatments for diseases besides cancer can also cause infertility. In particular, patients who undergo stem cell transplants can lose reproductive abilities from their treatments. A variety of…
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Huffington Post Cares about Cancer

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General, In the news
Tags: advocacy ribbon, cancer
An international collaboration between cancer organizations is launching the International Charter of Rights for Young People with Cancer. This group is leveraging their influence to improve cancer diagnosis and treatment for young people. The Huffington Post recently posted an article on the charter that hopes to…
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How does Cancer Affect Your Sexuality?

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General, Research
Tags: Advocate, clinical research, quality of life
The Oncofertility Consortium advances the reproductive future of cancer patients by maintaining their fertility. However, cancer patients and survivors can also suffer from sexual health problems independent from fertility. Receiving a cancer diagnosis can significantly affect feelings of sexuality, especially in cancers of the sexual…
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Techniques in Fertility: Ovarian Tissue Cryopreservation

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General, Oncofertility
Tags: Fertility Preservation, Oncofertility, ovarian tissue cryopreservation, Techniques
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 options are…
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BRCA and Babies: The Relationship Between Breast Cancer Genes and Fertility

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General, Oncofertility
Tags: BRCA, cancer, Fertility Preservation, Oncofertility
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…
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A Link Between Cancer Survival and Menstrual Period Loss

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General, Research
Tags: amenorrhea, cancer, infertility, New England Journal of Medicine
A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine shed some light on the link between chemotherapy and loss of ovarian function. The treatment of cancers, while lifesaving, can cause infertility in both men and women. Cancer therapy reduces fertility by affecting the ovaries. Chemotherapy and…
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Cancer and Health Care Reform

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General, In the news
Tags: cancer, insurance, legal
We posted last week on the Cancer Rights Conference in Chicago, Illinois hosted by the Disability Legal Resource Center. The health care reform bill was one of the most discussed topics at the conference. Formally called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the bill…
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I’m Too Young For This! In Support of Young Cancer Patients

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General
Tags: Advocate, AYA, cancer
In 1995, Matthew Zachary was a typical, yet talented, college student attending Binghamton University in upstate New York. While studying to become a music composer, Zachary was diagnosed with a brain cancer called medulloblastoma. After successfully fighting the cancer, Zachary founded I’m Too Young for This!…
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Sperm Banked Kids: What are the Psychological Implications of Sperm Banking?

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General
Tags: Donor, Fertility Preservation, infertility, Sperm Banking
A few days ago, I posted a blog on the history and techniques of sperm banking. But what happens to the children born from this method? No studies currently examine the mental health of sperm banked offspring who were raised by their biological fathers. Instead,…
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Techniques in Fertility: Sperm Banking

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, Fertility Preservation, General
Tags: Fertility Preservation, infertility, Sperm Banking, stem cell transplant, Techniques
While much time and energy is spent investigating new techniques in female fertility preservation, the male side of things does not receive much attention. This is primarily because there is one quick and easy way for men to preempt medically induced infertility, that is, sperm…
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New Research Gives Hope to Cancer Patients

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General
Tags: ovarian tissue cryopreservation
A recent article from Oncofertility Consortium members Susan Barrett, Lonnie Shea, and Teresa Woodruff, shows that human follicles, which are immature eggs, can be frozen and thawed safely. This breakthrough may give cancer survivors a greater chance at having children. While cancer treatments, such as…
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Celebrating Cancer Survivors Along the Chicago Lakefront

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General
Tags: cancer, chicago
On Sunday, June 6, Northwestern University held it’s 17th Annual Cancer Survivor’s Walk. More than 3,500 cancer survivors and their families participated in the four-mile walk, which was hosted by the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. The event gave the group a chance to…
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National Premier of “Sisters in Science” Documentary

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General
Tags: documentary, Oncofertility Saturday Academy, Young Womens Leadership
In 2007, the Women’s Health Science Program developed a series of classes to give 16 high school students a chance to experience cutting-edge scientific research at Northwestern University. The program, called the Oncofertility Saturday Academy (OSA), is designed to “connect students to what’s happening in…
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New Demography of American Motherhood

By: Sarah B Rodriguez -
Categories: Blog, General, In the news, Research
On May 6, 2010, the Pew Research Center released a study on changes in the demographics of motherhood in the United States. Comparing data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) and the Census Bureau from 1990 and 2008, the “The New Demography of…
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How Can Cancer Affect my Ability to Have Children?

Author image - Kristin N Smith By: Kristin N Smith -
Categories: Blog, General
Infertility, the inability to have children, should be a concern to men and women of childbearing age undergoing treatment for their cancer. Treatments like chemotherapy, radiation and surgery can all impact your fertility. Chemotherapy, while extremely effective at treating cancer, can cause damage to the…
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The Oncofertility Consortium celebrates National Lab Day!

By: Oncofertility Admin -
Categories: Blog, General
In an effort to continue its goal of helping communities foster an environment that encourages children to pursue careers in the sciences, the Oncofertility Consortium and Woodruff Lab celebrated National Lab Day today by opening its doors to students from all over Chicago.  Students were…
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The Oncofertility Consortium is at the forefront of a new era of scientific investigation: Team Science

By: Francesca Duncan -
Categories: Blog, Conferences, General, Research
Francesca Duncan, PhD ——– I was recently introduced to the formal concept of Team Science when I was fortunate enough to attend the First Annual International Science of Team Science Conference hosted by the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) on April 22-24,…
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