Endocrine prevention of chemotherapy-induced ovarian failure.

Purpose Of Review: Fertility preservation has recently gained a worldwide interest among fertility specialists, oncologists, and all healthcare providers. Thus, the protection against iatrogenic infertility caused by chemotherapy assumes a high priority. Specifically, the issue of endocrine prevention of gonadotoxicity is still a controversial subject.

Recent advances in bone regeneration using adult stem cells.

Bone is a highly vascularized tissue reliant on the close spatial and temporal association between blood vessels and bone cells. Therefore, cells that participate in vasculogenesis and osteogenesis play a pivotal role in bone formation during prenatal and postnatal periods. Nevertheless, spontaneous healing of bone fracture is occasionally impaired due to insufficient blood and cellular supply to the site of injury.

Preserving fertility when choosing chemotherapy regimens - the role of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists.

Introduction: The late effects of cancer treatment have recently gained a worldwide ubiquitous interest among reproductive endocrinologists, oncologists, and all health care providers. Despite many publications on this subject, there are many equivocal issues necessitating summary. The case for and against using GnRH-agonist for fertility preservation is summarized with the rationale that preventing ovarian failure may be better than treating it.

Adult stem cells in the use of jaw bone regeneration: current and prospective research.

Concomitant to the increased use of dental implants to replace lost dentition, there is a growing need to regenerate atrophic jaw bone to allow dental implant placement. Current surgical techniques for jaw bone augmentation share several limitations, such as operator sensitivity and relatively low predictability and high morbidity rates. Therefore, alternative treatment approaches have been developed in the field of tissue engineering.

Ovarian Stem Cells-the Pros and Cons.

The potential for postnatal de novo oogenesis in mammals and in humans has become very controversial in the fields of reproductive science and biology. Historically, it has been thought that females of most mammalian species lose the ability to produce oocytes at birth. A contemporary understanding of stem cell biology together with novel experimental methods has challenged the model of a prenatal fixed ovarian primordial follicle pool that declines with age.

Human amniotic epithelial cells differentiate into cells expressing germ cell specific markers when cultured in medium containing serum substitute supplement.

Background: Human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs) maintain the plasticity of pregastrulation embryonic cells, having the potential to differentiate into all three germ layers. The potential of these cells to differentiate into cells expressing germ cell specific markers has never been described before.

Methods: In the present study, hAECs were cultured in medium containing serum substitute supplement (SSS).

Human amniotic epithelial cells cultured in substitute serum medium maintain their stem cell characteristics for up to four passages.

Background And Objectives: The common applied culture medium in which human amniotic epithelial cells (hAECs) maintain their stem cell characteristics contains fetal calf serum (FCS) and thus is not compatible with possible future clinical applications due to the danger of animal derived pathogens. To overcome this problem, we replaced FCS with serum substitute supplement, a serum substitute used in the in vitro fertilization for embryo development, in the common applied culture medium and cultured hAECs in this substitute serum medium (SSM).

Methods And Results: Purity validation and characterization of freshly isolated and cultured hAECs was assessed through the expression of stem cell specific markers by RT-PCR (gene expression), by immunofluorescence staining and FACS (protein expression).