Fertility Preservation Program
Principal Investigator:
Kyle Orwig, PhD
Co-Principal Investigators: Peter Shaw, MD; Serena Dovey, MD
Chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer and other conditions can damage fertility and reduce or eliminate a patient's chance of having children in the future. This is a significant human health issue because improved treatments have dramatically increased cancer survival rates. Therefore, issues affecting quality of life after cancer (including fertility) are increasingly important to survivors.
Our Commitment
The Fertility Preservation Program of Pittsburgh is committed to
- educating patients and their physicians about the reproductive consequences of chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer or other conditions;
- providing state of the art reproductive technologies to preserve fertility;
- pioneering new reproductive technologies to preserve fertility;
- rapidly translating these new technologies to the clinic, and;
- training the next generation of clinicians and researchers in the rapidly evolving discipline of fertility preservation.
Participate in the Preserving Fertility after Cancer study
Patient Stories
Just Call Me 'Mom' (search "Cobb")
Surgeon, Survivor, Father Sees Life on the Other Side of Cancer (search "Rivera")
Doctors Aim to Save Fertility of Kids with Cancer
Pittsburgh doctors say more area women choosing to freeze eggs
Program's Egg Freezing Expands Fertility Options
Related News Stories/Blogs
Life, Interrupted: A Young Cancer Patient Faces Infertility
About Us
The Fertility Preservation Program is a multidisciplinary working group that includes key stake holders at Magee-Womens Research Institute, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. We have established a dedicated phone line (412-641-7475) that patients and their physicians can call to learn about the reproductive side effects of their treatments and options for preserving their fertility. This is a discussion that needs to happen before toxic therapies are initiated and fertility is irreversibly destroyed.
Adult men and women can freeze eggs, sperm or embryos prior to treatment, and these standard services are available in the Center for Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology at Magee-Womens Hospital. There are no standard options to preserve the fertility of boys and girls who are not yet producing mature eggs or sperm. For these young patients, we are approved to freeze testicular or ovarian tissue that might be used in the future to restore fertility when experimental techniques emerge from the research pipeline.
Through the Center for Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology at Magee-Womens Hospital, we provide the following services for patients ranging from prepuberty to adulthood:
- semen cryopreservation
- embryo cryopreservation
- embryo cryopreservation using donor sperm
- oocyte cryopreservation (in coordination with the Institutional Review Board at the University of Pittsburgh)
- testicular tissue freezing (in coordination with the Institutional Review Board at the University of Pittsburgh)
- ovarian tissue freezing (in coordination with the Institutional Review Board at the University of Pittsburgh)
Selected Publications
- Dovey SL, Valli H, Hermann BP, Sukhwani M, Donohue J, Castro CA, Chu T, Sanfilippo JS, Orwig KE. Eliminating malignant contamination from therapeutic human spermatogonial stem cells. Journal of Clinical Investigation 2013; In Press.
- Hermann BP, Sukhwani M, Winkler F, Pascarella JN, Peters KA, Sheng Y, Valli H, Rodriguez M, Esselarab M, Dargo G, Peterson K, Masterson K, Ramsey C, Ward T, Lienesch M, Volk A, Cooper DK, Thomson AW, Kiss JE, Penedo MT, Schatten GP, Shoukhrat M and Orwig KE. Spermatogonial stem cell transplantation into Rhesus testes regenerates spermatogenesis producing functional sperm. Cell Stem Cell 2012; 11:715-26.
- Dovey S. Oocyte Cryopreservation: advances and drawbacks. Minerva Ginecol.; 64: 485-500, 2012.
- Clark AT, Phillips BT and Orwig KE. Fruitful progress to fertility: Male fertility in the test tube. Nat Med.; 17:1564-5, 2011.
Our Faculty
Kyle Orwig, Ph.D.
Director, Fertility Preservation Program, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC
Magee-Womens Research Institute & Foundation
Joe Sanfilippo, M.D.
Director, Center for Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC
Peter Shaw, M.D.
Director, Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
Glenn Cannon, M.D.
Pediatric Urology, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC
Serena Dovey, M.D.
Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC
Contact Information
Fertility Preservation phone line: 412-641-7475
Nurse Coordinator: Sandra Alway, RN
Research Coordinator: Jennifer Shuttleworth, BS
Links
Center for Fertility and Reproductive Endocrinology
Adolescent and Young Adult (AYA) Oncology Program
Pediatric Urology