Science AMA Series: Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Teresa Woodruff from Northwestern
University here to answer any questions you may have about ovarian
biology, oncofertility, and the importance of sex and gender inclusion
in the biomedical sciences.
Abstract
Hi Reddit! I’m Dr. Teresa Woodruff from Northwestern University here to
answer any questions you may have about ovarian biology, oncofertility,
and the importance of sex and gender inclusion in the biomedical
sciences. In 2006, I coined the term “oncofertility” to describe the
merging of two fields: oncology and fertility. When we started this
work, young men were able to bank sperm before a potentially sterilizing
cancer treatment but women, with the same hope for survival, were not
provide options. Now we have options and babies born to men and women
who have survived their disease. This work was fostered by my interest
in ovarian biology. Men make sperm constantly – about 1,500 sperm with
every heartbeat. By contrast, women are born with all the oocytes that
we will ever have – about 1 million in our ovaries. My lab is
interested in how the ovarian reserve, this million follicle pool (a
follicle is a single egg surrounded by cells that produce hormones like
estrogen and support egg maturation) is metered out from birth until
menopause – 6 decades to wait for activation. We began growing
individual ovarian follicles in our lab to unravel some of this
fundamental biology and developed strategies that are helping cancer
patients who want to protect their fertility. Finally, I’m interested in
educating scientists about the value of including both males and females
in their studies. For a lot of good reasons, many labs study only one
sex. But the outcomes from single sex experiments cannot always be
translated to the opposite sex. So we have been working to ensure that
we all think about sex as a biological variable from bench to bedside. I
will be back at 2 pm ET to answer your questions, ask me anything! Here
are some resources for more information: Women’s Health Research
Institute Oncofertility Consortium Repropedia Introduction to
Reproduction on Coursera EDIT: Thank you for all of your questions! I
will be heading out now but may check back in if there are any follow up
questions!