Investigation of apoptosis on chemotherapy drug-exposed gonads

During recent decades, there has been a welcome increase in the survival rate of cancer patients, allowing effort to now focus on improving the quality of life of survivors. For the majority of younger patients, a top concern after survival is the impact of any treatment on future fertility, with chemotherapy and radiotherapy both affecting fertility of both males and females. An important first step to determine why fertility is affected is to understand the initial, direct effect of the chemotherapeutic agents. This study will address that, using tissue culture of mouse ovaries as an experimental model.