NORFOLK Cancer is an equal-opportunity disease, striking the very old, the very young, and all ages in between.

For younger patients, the harsh treatment to rid the body of cancer adds an extra layer of insult, robbing many of their fertility.

Cancer patients lose fertility when high doses of radiation or chemotherapy hit their eggs or sperm cells, triggering egg death and halting production of sperm cells.

Women also endure a condition similar to menopause because the treatment kills cells in the ovary that make the female hormone estrogen.

Scientists at the Jones Institute are working toward saving the fertility of thousands of women through studying ovarian-tissue transplantation. During the procedure, ovarian tissue is removed and either preserved by freezing or relocated to alternative sites in the body to avoid exposure to damaging cancer treatment.

Once the tissue is transplanted, it produces hormones and a mature egg develops.

Doctors have succeeded in recovering mature eggs from the arm, but the eggs have been resistant to fertilization.

Besides cancer patients, the technology could help preserve the fertility of women suffering from endometriosis, in which cells that normally line the uterus grow into the fallopian tubes and other organs, resulting in infertility. The technology could also help girls with Turner syndrome, a condition that results in the destruction of the eggs by puberty.

So far, ovarian-tissue transplantation has yet to produce a human baby, but scientists from the Oregon National Primate Center at Oregon Health and Science University recently used the process to produce a healthy monkey.

The monkey is the first primate born by ovarian-tissue transplantation, and the news is "encouraging for human studies," Gosden said.

The latest work builds on studies done 50 years ago, when scientists in London tested freezing and transplanting ovary tissue in rats.

Research slowed because there was no practical application for the technique at that time.

Scientists' interest in the field was renewed after in vitro fertilization became an accepted technique by the late 1980s.

"Females could do nothing really until in vitro fertilization technology came along and then you could store embryos," Gosden said.

Freezing embryos is used on a small scale, but it is not always a practical option.

Sometimes cancer treatment begins before a woman has time to try in vitro fertilization, which requires weeks of hormone treatment to stimulate egg production. And even when there is time, a sperm donor might not be available.

In vitro fertilization is not an option for children faced with potentially sterilizing treatment. But ovarian-tissue transplantation could be an option because females are born with ovaries filled with thousands of immature eggs that could be frozen for later transplantation.

"We've always believed that this technique is likely to be much more successful in children rather than adults, but of course it will take a long time before we know what the benefits are," said Gosden, referring to the wait for a girl to reach adulthood when the frozen tissue could be transplanted.

While ovarian-tissue transplantation is promising, the procedure is still experimental.

The biggest challenge, said Gosden, is reducing egg loss while new blood vessels form to restore blood flow to the transplanted tissue.

Scientists might overcome the problem someday by transplanting the whole ovary with blood vessels still attached, reducing the number of eggs lost in the transplant procedure.

"I think it's going to take a bit longer to store the whole ovary," Gosden said, "but I think it will ultimately be possible."