An existing drug may one day protect premenopausal women from infertility that commonly follows cancer treatments, new research has found.
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According to Research:
- Women who are treated for cancer with radiation or certain chemotherapy drugs are commonly rendered sterile.
- Women are born with a lifetime reserve of oocytes, or immature eggs.
- But those oocytes are among the most sensitive cells in the body and may be wiped out by such cancer treatments.
- The new findings raises hope of curbing infertility from cancer treatment.
- The study builds on his 2014 research that identified a so-called checkpoint protein (CHK2).
- In addition,that becomes activated when oocytes are damaged by radiation.
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Checkpoint protein:
- Checkpoint protein functions in a pathway that eliminates oocytes with DNA damage.
- A natural function to protect against giving birth to offspring bearing new mutations.
- When the researchers irradiated mice lacking the CHK2 gene, the oocytes survived.
- Eventually repaired the DNA damage, and the mice gave birth to healthy pups.
- The new study explored whether the checkpoint 2 pathway could be chemically inhibited.
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According to Researchers:
- It turns out there were pre-existing CHK2 inhibitor drugs that were developed.
- Ironically enough, for cancer treatment, but they turned out not to be very useful for treating cancer.
- By giving mice the inhibitor drug, a small molecule, it essentially mimicked the knockout of the checkpoint gene.
- By inhibiting the checkpoint pathway, the oocytes were not killed by radiation and remained fertile.
- Enabling birth of normal pups, the study said.
- While humans and mice have different physiologies.
- And there is much work to be done to determine safe and effective dosages for people.
- In addition,it is clear that we have the proof of principle for this approach.