Cancer is diagnosed in approximately one out of every thousand pregnancies, with chemotherapy treatment currently considered safe to administer during the second and third
trimesters of pregnancy.
Agnes investigates the effects of the chemotherapy drug etoposide on the developing mouse ovary and found that it damages the development of oocytes within mouse ovary tissue grown in vitro.
If replicated in human tissue, female foetuses exposed to etoposide in utero could have fertility problems in later life, potentially undergoing premature menopause.
The prize for the best presentation has been awarded at the annual SRF conference in Winchester, as a result of which Agnes is invited to present a paper at the Australian Society for Reproductive Biology (SRB) Annual Scientific Conference in Australia in 2017.