A prospective, observational study of chemotherapy-induced ovarian damage on follicular reserve and maturation.

Background: Chemotherapy negatively affects gonadal function, often resulting in premature ovarian failure (POF) due to ovarian reserve depletion. Mechanisms of gonadotoxicity, such as primordial follicle overactivation and "burnout", remain to be established. Ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC) before treatment plays an important role in safeguarding fertility.

Do stage and grade of malignancy impact fertility preservation in breast cancer patients?

Introduction: The impact of cancer on basal fertility and ovarian response to stimulation has not yet been clarified. Evidence on this topic is scarce and conflicting. Aim of this study was to assess the impact of breast cancer stage and grade on the number of retrieved mature oocytes during controlled ovarian stimulation for fertility preservation.

Newly-identified receptors for peptide histidine-isoleucine and GHRH-like peptide in zebrafish help to elucidate the mammalian secretin superfamily.

A group of ten hormones in humans are structurally related and known as the secretin superfamily. These hormones bind to G-protein-coupled receptors that activate the cAMP pathway and are clustered as the secretin or B family. We used an evolutionary approach with zebrafish as a model to understand why some of these hormones, such as peptide histidine-methionine (PHM) and pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP)-related peptide (PRP) in humans lack a receptor.

Astressin-amide and astressin-acid are structurally different in dimethylsulfoxide.

The C-terminally amidated CRF antagonist astressin binds to CRF-R1 or CRF-R2 receptors with low nanomolar affinity while the corresponding astressin-acid has >100 times less affinity. To understand the role of the amide group in binding, the conformations of astressin-amide and astressin-acid were studied in DMSO using NMR techniques. The 3D NMR structures show that the backbones of both analogs prefer an alpha-helical conformation, with a small kink around Gln(26).

Identification of new gonadotrophin-releasing hormone partial agonists.

GnRH agonists or antagonists are currently utilized as therapeutic agents in a number of diseases. A side-effect of prolonged treatment with GnRH analogues is hypoestrogenism. In this study, we tested the in vitro potency of different GnRH analogues originally found to be partial agonists (i.

AlphaA-Conotoxin OIVA defines a new alphaA-conotoxin subfamily of nicotinic acetylcholine receptor inhibitors.

The venoms of cone snails are rich in multiply disulfide-crosslinked peptides, the conotoxins. Conotoxins are grouped into families on the basis of shared cysteine patterns and homologous molecular targets. For example, both the kappaA- and alphaA-conotoxin families share the same Class IV Cys pattern (-CC-C-C-C-C-), but differ in their molecular targets.

Goldfish ghrelin: molecular characterization of the complementary deoxyribonucleic acid, partial gene structure and evidence for its stimulatory role in food intake.

Complementary deoxyribonucleic acid (cDNA) encoding goldfish preproghrelin was identified using rapid amplification of the cDNA ends (RACE) and reverse transcription (RT)-polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The 490 bp cDNA encodes a 103 amino acid preproghrelin which has a 26 amino acid signal region, 19 amino acid mature peptide and a 55 amino acid C-terminal peptide region. The mature peptide region of goldfish ghrelin has two putative cleavage sites and amidation signals (GRR); one after 12 amino acids and the other after 19 amino acids.