Marina Peluffo and Teresa Woodruff stand in front of the abstract poster Peluffo won an award for at the 15th World Congress on IVF in Geneva, Switzerland in April 2009.

Marina Peluffo, an Oncofertility Consortium member from Portland, Oregon, won an award for her poster abstract “Cumulus Oocyte Complexes from Small Antral Follicles during the Early Follicular Phase of Spontaneous Cycles in Rhesus Monkeys Can Expand and Yield Oocytes Capable of Maturation In Vitro”.

Her poster was presented at the 15th World Congress on IVF in Geneva, Switzerland earlier this year. Teresa Woodruff also attended the Congress in April and was one of the 100 plenary speakers to address close to 750 participants from 67 different countries. For more information about the Congress go to the ISIVF Web site.

To view our previous entry on the World Congress, click here: Oncofertility at the 15th World Congress on IVF.

The Oregon Health and Science University Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program at the Knight Cancer Institute was awarded Fertile Hope’s National Center of Excellence Status award on April 9th, 2009.

Fertile Hope is a non-profit organization that strives to provide information on reproductive health for cancer patients and survivors who may be facing infertility due to their cancer treatments. According to OHSU’s press release, the award “recognizes the institute’s leadership in addressing fertility issues and options for young cancer patients.”

OHSU is one of just seven healthcare facilities in the United States to have been awarded the Center of Excellence Status. The Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program may not have succeeded as well as it has without the tremendous efforts put forth by Dr. David Lee.

An internationally reknowned researcher in the area of female fertility preservation, Dr. Lee initiated participation between the program and the physicians that treat infertility at OHSU by encouraging oncologists and infertility experts to communicate so that options for fertility preservation are now included in the counseling for young cancer patients.

Dr. David Lee works in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at the OHSU Infertility Clinic. He was present at the event with Dr. Hayes-Lattin, director of the OHSU Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology Program and co-chairman of the LIVESTRONG Young Adult Alliance, to accept the award from Fertile Hope.

Read the OHSU press release here and to read the blog entry on the award by Fertile Hope founder Lindsay Nohr Beck, click here.

Dr. Jeffrey Chang wins the San Diego Science Alliance Partnership Award at a ceremony on May 21st, 2009. He is accompanied by SDSA Executive Director Nancy Taylor and SDSA Preseident Rick Beach. Photo courtesy of SDSA.

Dr. Jeffrey Chang, the principal investigator of the National Physicians Cooperative, is the winner of the Partnership Award from the San Diego Science Alliance. The award ceremony took place on May 21st in San Diego and honors Dr. Chang’s efforts to improve K-12 science education.

Dr. Chang is the Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology at the University of California, San Diego. He was one of the leading physician scientists to identify Oncofertility as a critical issue for young women and he runs the San Diego equivalent of the Oncofertility Saturday Academy – the BE WiSE program.

Twelve young women from 10 different high schools and attending 10th to 12th grade in San Diego County are participating in the BE WiSE program. Their first session will be on reproductive biology and will take place on July 11th.