Freezing Ovarian Tissue for Later Transplantation May Restore Fertility
Researchers in New York reported an intriguing finding last week that may offer hope for women who become infertile as a result of cancer treatments like chemotherapy or radiotherapy. In a brief paper published in the March 13 issue of The Lancet, a team from the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center reported on a case in which they cryopreserved ovarian tissue from a 30-year-old woman with breast cancer before she underwent chemotherapy. Six years later, after the woman had undergone successful treatment for cancer, the tissue was thawed and transplanted beneath the skin of her abdomen. The patient's ovarian function returned after three months.
Over the next eight months, the team was able to retrieve eight viable oocytes for use in in-vitro fertilization with her husband's sperm. From this, one four-cell embryo was produced and transferred to the patient's uterus. She did not, however, become pregnant. In a news release, the lead investigator, Dr. Kutluk Oktay, said the research "represents a potentially significant reproductive advancement in two respects: first, women can preserve their fertility by freezing their ovarian tissue, and second, pregnancy may be possible even after the tissue remains frozen for a long time."
In an editorial that accompanied the study, Prof. Johan Smitz from the Centre for Reproductive Medicine, University Hospital of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium, offered words of caution. Because of many unknowns related to cryopreservation and screening tissue for transplant, he wrote, this option "should still be presented as experimental to patients."
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