| AACI News |
Major National Grant Awarded to Dr. Teresa Woodruff
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded a $21 million grant to the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University for a landmark national research, clinical, and education program that targets fertility threats posed to women by cancer treatment.
The program, called The Oncofertility Consortium, is headed by leading fertility researcher Dr. Teresa Woodruff, Thomas J. Watkins Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and chief of the Feinberg School’s newly created fertility preservation division. She coined the term “oncofertility” to define the pioneering new discipline in which cancer treatment and fertility health intersect.
The NIH Roadmap for Medical Research (an effort to integrate aspects of different disciplines to address health challenges that have been resistant to traditional research approaches) is funding the program. The Roadmap programs primarily aim “to help transform the way research is conducted,” according to NIH director Dr. Elias A. Zerhouni.
When a woman is diagnosed with cancer, saving her life is the focus of her treatment. But the powerful chemotherapy and radiation that cures cancer or sends it into remission can destroy a woman’s ability to conceive children. The goal of the new program is to significantly alter how the medical world cares for female cancer patients and promote a new consciousness to protect their reproductive health.
"We’re trying to create a total shift in how we interact with female cancer patients to anticipate their lives as survivors and their ability to bear children," Woodruff said.
The Oncofertility Consortium is comprised of an interdisciplinary team of biomedical and social scientists, oncologists, pediatricians, engineers, educators, social workers, and medical ethicists from Northwestern and the University of California-San Diego, University of Pennsylvania, University of Missouri-Columbia, and Oregon Health & Science University. Its research will include a thorough examination of the scientific, medical, psychological, legal, and ethical issues surrounding infertility and cancer.
Consortium members will work together on scientific, medical, psychological, legal, and ethical issues surrounding the use of advanced reproductive technologies in cancer patients. Researchers will investigate how young women will be able to afford these new technologies. The consortium also will assess how extraordinary stress affects women’s decisions and will develop new strategies to improve the quality of communications with newly diagnosed cancer patients.
The funding will support new research to preserve fertility for women and teenage girls. Eventually, it also will have a unique focus on young girls and even infants, the two populations for whom there currently are few options. As the survival rate for childhood cancer continues to improve, saving children’s fertility is becoming an urgent mission.
More information on the program is available at cancer.northwestern.edu or oncofertility.northwestern.edu.
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