Kasturba
Medical College achieves milestone in oncofertility
Manipal:
Centre for Fertility Preservation, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal achieved a
milestone by providing fertility preservation care to cancer affected
pre-pubertal boys, in collaboration with University of Muenster, Germany. In a
first of its kind programme in the country, the recently established Centre has
successfully cryopreserved testicular stem cells from two boys diagnosed with
lymphoma. “India is seeing increased incidence of childhood cancer in boys and
due to advancements in cancer treatment, there is a tremendous increase in the
number of cancer survivors. However, oncofertility (fertility preservation)
research in India is still in its infancy and we are glad that Fertility
Preservation Centre has taken a challenging task to help cancer affected boys,”
said Dr Vinod Bhat, Vice Chancellor of Manipal University.
The
Centre will maintain the immature germ cells until the patients attain
adulthood and ready to start their own family. Parallely, the Centre is also
researching on the derivation of mature sperm cells from pre-pubertal tissue.
Gonadal damage leading to infertility is a relatively common consequence of the
treatments used to cure childhood cancer as the testes have a low threshold for
damage induced by commonly used anticancer drugs and radiation. “Germ cells are
retrieved from one of the testicles by a simple biopsy before the commencement
of the cancer therapy. ‘This is relatively a simple surgical procedure and does
not affect the future sexual function of the children’ said Dr Vijaykumar, a
paediatric surgeon who performed the surgical removal of germ cells from the
testis. “This is a significant step forward towards providing fertility care by
our team” said Dr PoornimaBaliga, Dean, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal.
The Centre for Fertility Preservation
has consortium members from specialities such as IVF scientists,
Paediatricians, Oncologists, Surgeons and Gynaecologists. “As India does not have
such specialized facility, our Centre will soon serve as a national resource
for cancer affected children so that testicular tissues collected from the
other hospitals anywhere in the country can be transported to Manipal for
banking purpose,” said Dr Satish Kumar Adiga, who is heading the programme here
in Manipal. Using animal models, several advancements have been made in this
direction in Germany and other European countries to successfully cryopreserve
pre-pubertal germ cells and derive mature spermatozoa outside the body. But so
far, this approach is purely experimental. “We are collaborating with various
research institutes in the world including Manipal University to develop a
technique of mimicking the entire process of mammalian spermatogenesis in a
culture dish” said Dr Stefan Schlatt an Adjunct Professor to Manipal University
who is also heading the fertility preservation programme in Germany.
Alexander
von Humboldt foundation, a non-profit organisation established in Germany, to
promote international research cooperation is supporting the activities of the
Centre with other Indian agencies such as Department of Science and Technology
and Indian Council of Medical Research.
Source:
www.medicaldialogues.in
02.08.2016
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