Young women diagnosed with cancer often face an unthinkable choice: Save your fertility — or your life. And when cancer treatment needs to start right away, there’s little time for eggs to mature before they can be harvested and frozen by fertility specialists.
RELATED: Bursting With Joy — Lauren Chiarello’s Double Miracle — Twins After Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
But in a medical triumph, a new technique — known as in vitro maturation (IVM) — has just proved successful in France, with news of a baby born to a 34-year-old breast-cancer survivor, according to new report in the Annals of Oncology.
RELATED VIDEO: ‘Ask Any Question That’s on Your Mind’: Giuliana Rancic Talks Advocating for Yourself and Having Kids After Cancer
“We were delighted that the patient became pregnant without any difficulty and successfully delivered a healthy baby at term,” says said Professor Michaël Grynberg, head of the Department of Reproductive Medicine and Fertility Preservation at the Antoine Béclère University Hospital, near Paris, who headed the experimental procedure.”This success represents a breakthrough in the field of fertility preservation.”
RELATED VIDEO: How Does Chemotherapy Affect Fertility? Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in New York.
Diagnosed with breast cancer at 29, the patient needed to start chemotherapy immediately, so doctors offered her a new option to preserve her eggs called in vitro maturation (IVM.)
RELATED: Pop Singer & Breast Cancer Survivor Kylie Minogue, 51, Wonders What it Would Have Been Like to Have Children Instead of Cancer
In the procedure, researchers would retrieve her immature eggs and allow them to mature in a lab before freezing. Doctors removed seven immature eggs from the patient’s ovaries before she began cancer treatment. Then, using IVM, they enabled the eggs to continue developing in the laboratory. When the eggs reached maturity, they were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen to reduce the risk of cellular damage from ice crystals.
RELATED: “I Didn’t Have Time to Preserve My Fertility”– TLC Star Aly Taylor Talks Cancer, Faith, And Becoming a Family of Five Against All Odds
Five years later, the patient was in remission and ready to have a baby. But she wasn’t a candidate for hormone-fueled fertility treatments. Stimulating her ovaries with hormones to prompt them to produce more eggs, would increase the risk of her breast cancer recurring, so she and her doctors decided to use her frozen eggs.
RELATED VIDE0: “Can I Have a Baby After Breast Cancer?” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and medical advisor to SurvivorNet addresses this question.
All six eggs survived the thawing process and they were fertilised using ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection); five fertilised successfully and one embryo was transferred to the patient’s womb. She became pregnant and nine months later, on July 6, 2019, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Jules.
Before Chemo: Fast-Start Fertility
While IVM is the latest success in the field of fertility preservation, Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in New York says, for young women diagnosed with cancer, the first question is often, “Can I have a baby?
Says Dr. Knopman, “You’ll probably be referred to a fertility specialist, and freezing your eggs for later use is often an option.
RELATED: Becoming a Father After Cancer — Todd Rosenbluth’s Story
In order to get this done quickly, a so-called “fast start fertility preservation technique” is used, says Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at CCRM NY.
Fast-start fertility hormone injections begin, “no matter where you are in your menstrual cycle,” says Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at CCRM in New
This means that no matter where you are in your cycle, the production of eggs is stimulated and can be done in as little as two weeks.
RELATED: Survivor Giuliana Rancic, 45, Found Her Breast Cancer After a Mammogram During Fertility Treatment — Now She Has a Beautiful Boy
To achieve this, a patient is given hormone injections in the morning and night. It’s a ten-day process, during which regular blood tests and ultrasounds are performed. When estrogen levels are at peak, a final injection is given and 35 hours later the eggs are removed. If you are freezing the eggs alone, then they are assessed for maturity and frozen. For freezing embryos, the eggs are fertilized with sperm and then grown in the laboratory.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Constance Costas is a writer for SurvivorNet.
Read MoreYoung women diagnosed with cancer often face an unthinkable choice: Save your fertility — or your life. And when cancer treatment needs to start right away, there’s little time for eggs to mature before they can be harvested and frozen by fertility specialists.
RELATED: Bursting With Joy — Lauren Chiarello’s Double Miracle — Twins After Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
Read More But in a medical triumph, a new technique — known as in vitro maturation (IVM) — has just proved successful in France, with
news of a baby born to a 34-year-old breast-cancer survivor, according to new report in the Annals of Oncology.
RELATED VIDEO: ‘Ask Any Question That’s on Your Mind’: Giuliana Rancic Talks Advocating for Yourself and Having Kids After Cancer
“We were delighted that the patient became pregnant without any difficulty and successfully delivered a healthy baby at term,” says said Professor Michaël Grynberg, head of the Department of Reproductive Medicine and Fertility Preservation at the Antoine Béclère University Hospital, near Paris, who headed the experimental procedure.”This success represents a breakthrough in the field of fertility preservation.”
RELATED VIDEO: How Does Chemotherapy Affect Fertility? Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in New York.
Diagnosed with breast cancer at 29, the patient needed to start chemotherapy immediately, so doctors offered her a new option to preserve her eggs called in vitro maturation (IVM.)
RELATED: Pop Singer & Breast Cancer Survivor Kylie Minogue, 51, Wonders What it Would Have Been Like to Have Children Instead of Cancer
In the procedure, researchers would retrieve her immature eggs and allow them to mature in a lab before freezing. Doctors removed seven immature eggs from the patient’s ovaries before she began cancer treatment. Then, using IVM, they enabled the eggs to continue developing in the laboratory. When the eggs reached maturity, they were flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen to reduce the risk of cellular damage from ice crystals.
RELATED: “I Didn’t Have Time to Preserve My Fertility”– TLC Star Aly Taylor Talks Cancer, Faith, And Becoming a Family of Five Against All Odds
Five years later, the patient was in remission and ready to have a baby. But she wasn’t a candidate for hormone-fueled fertility treatments. Stimulating her ovaries with hormones to prompt them to produce more eggs, would increase the risk of her breast cancer recurring, so she and her doctors decided to use her frozen eggs.
RELATED VIDE0: “Can I Have a Baby After Breast Cancer?” Dr. Elizabeth Comen, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and medical advisor to SurvivorNet addresses this question.
All six eggs survived the thawing process and they were fertilised using ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection); five fertilised successfully and one embryo was transferred to the patient’s womb. She became pregnant and nine months later, on July 6, 2019, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy named Jules.
Before Chemo: Fast-Start Fertility
While IVM is the latest success in the field of fertility preservation, Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine in New York says, for young women diagnosed with cancer, the first question is often, “Can I have a baby?
Says Dr. Knopman, “You’ll probably be referred to a fertility specialist, and freezing your eggs for later use is often an option.
RELATED: Becoming a Father After Cancer — Todd Rosenbluth’s Story
In order to get this done quickly, a so-called “fast start fertility preservation technique” is used, says Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at CCRM NY.
Fast-start fertility hormone injections begin, “no matter where you are in your menstrual cycle,” says Dr. Jaime Knopman, Director of Fertility Preservation at CCRM in New
This means that no matter where you are in your cycle, the production of eggs is stimulated and can be done in as little as two weeks.
RELATED: Survivor Giuliana Rancic, 45, Found Her Breast Cancer After a Mammogram During Fertility Treatment — Now She Has a Beautiful Boy
To achieve this, a patient is given hormone injections in the morning and night. It’s a ten-day process, during which regular blood tests and ultrasounds are performed. When estrogen levels are at peak, a final injection is given and 35 hours later the eggs are removed. If you are freezing the eggs alone, then they are assessed for maturity and frozen. For freezing embryos, the eggs are fertilized with sperm and then grown in the laboratory.
Learn more about SurvivorNet's rigorous medical review process.
Constance Costas is a writer for SurvivorNet.
Read More
