Unexpected side effect
Doctors accidentally found out how to protect cancer patients from infertility
American biologists accidentally discovered that an immune system stimulant drug protects future spermatozoa from death when using chemotherapy during cancer treatment, according to an article published in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology (Kotzur et al., Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) promotes spermatogenic regeneration from surviving spermatogonia after high-dose alkylating chemotherapy).
"In our experiments, we used G-CSF molecules to protect the body from infections. It turned out that this medicine unexpectedly protected males from the development of infertility," said Brian Hermann from the University of Texas at San Antonio (in a press release, the UTSA study describes a drug that could prevent infertility in cancer patients – VM).
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy of cancer often leads to the development of infertility in men, since drug molecules or ionizing radiation kill not only actively dividing cancer cells, but also stem cells in the testes of men, which turn into "blanks" of sperm, and then into the germ cells themselves. For this reason, doctors usually suggest men not to take risks and freeze samples of genetic material before their treatment begins.
Hermann and his colleagues almost accidentally discovered how this can be avoided by observing what happened in the body of mice before and after chemotherapy. The scientists conducted these experiments before, as it seemed to them, the "main experiment", during which they wanted to try to use stem cells to restore fertility in infertile mice.
During chemotherapy, virtually all patients are prescribed a standard drug – colony stimulating granulocyte factor or G-CSF, a special hormone that promotes the growth of certain stem cells in the bone marrow of humans and other mammals. The fact is that chemotherapy kills not only cancer and germ cells, but also granulocytes and other components of the immune system, as a result of which the human immune system weakens after chemotherapy.
Observing the life of mice for about five months, biologists were surprised to find that those individuals who took a large amount of G-CSF after chemotherapy gradually regained the ability to conceive children, and the number of germ cells in their testes began to grow, reaching about 10% of preoperative values.
Such a discovery may give new hope to the youngest cancer patients, who simply do not have the opportunity to get sperm samples for storage, since their germ cells have not yet begun to divide. It also increases the chances of procreation for adult men suffering from cancer. Moreover, G-CSF has long been approved for use and is widely used in medicine. In the near future, Hermann plans to check whether there are differences in the frequency of infertility in men who took or did not take the drug.
Further experiments have shown that this substance promotes the growth of the number of spermatozoa and the division of their "blanks" even in the body of healthy mice. Accordingly, G-CSF can be used to combat infertility and low fertility in all men, not just cancer patients.
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14.02.2017