The future of female fertility

Norah Spears and Evelyn Telfer, Biomedical Sciences

'Let's Talk About Health' is all about advancing our knowledge of normal human and animal biology, and what goes wrong in disease.

Female fertility declines with age yet more women are delaying having children until later in life. Women are born with all their eggs and their number and quality is reduced as they get older. This process can be accelerated by exposure to certain treatments; for example young girls and women under-going chemotherapy can become infertile at an earlier age. If young eggs could be stored and used later or if new eggs could be made from stem cells we could overcome these damaging effects, and indeed the ageing process itself. 

Join us to hear about the factors that lead to a decline in female fertility. Hear about research at the University of Edinburgh that is developing and improving techniques to grow and make human eggs outside the body.