Mechanism and Significance of Luteal Desensitization: Chairman’s Concluding Remarks

Abstract

I have been charged with the task to sum up this wide-ranging discussion, to search for some take-home lessons and to identify issues that invite further investigation. We may first wonder why the Organizing Committee has seen fit to devote an entire session of this Workshop to luteal desensitization. The reason, I assume, was the belief that this pehonomenon is not merely a laboratory aretefact, but has some physiological relevance; and that in probing the molecular basis of the refractory state we may gain new insights into wider issues of peptide hormone action, the mode of transduction of the hormonal stimulus across the cell membrane and the organization of the cell surface. The decision may also have been prompted by a hunch that some of this information may eventually be put to practical use in the field of fertility regulation.