BACKGROUND Some reports show that it is possible to isolate immature oocytes from human ovarian tissue retrieved by a cortex biopsy or ovariectomy of non-stimulated ovaries and mature them in vitro. The mature oocytes can be vitrified and stored for in vitro fertilization, which, along with ovarian tissue cryopreservation, is mostly practiced in young cancer patients to preserve their fertility...

Over the past 30 years many cryopreservation procedures have been applied to oocytes, embryos, sperm, ovarian and testicular tissue. Over this time many, often specialized, terms have been developed for all aspects of these procedures. This can make it difficult for readers who are not familiar with the terminology or protocols to compare and evaluate different procedures. This paper describes ...

Immediate use of freshly collected testis tissue in diagnosis or in reproductive technologies is not always possible or desirable. Therefore, the ability to properly preserve the tissue for varying intervals is an essential step for maximizing the use of the source tissue. Preservation of gametes and gonads is a topic of interest in reproductive biomedicine. Other chapters in this book have ele...

Diagnosis of breast cancer in young women poses a threat to fertility. Due to a recent trend of delaying pregnancy, an increasing number of breast cancer patients in reproductive age wish to bear children. Health care providers have the responsibility to know how to manage fertility issues in cancer survivors. Oncofertility counseling is of great importance to many young women diagnosed with ca...

BACKGROUND Ovarian aging and cytotoxic treatments are the most common causes for fertility loss in women. With increasing numbers of young female survivors following cytotoxic cancer treatments, the issue of fertility preservation has assumed greater importance. METHODS We review the literature on the causes of female fertility loss as well as the recent advances in fertility preservation opt...

At present, there are three ways to determine effectively the quality of the cryopreservation procedure using ovarian tissue before the re-implantation treatment: evaluation of follicles after post-thawing xenotransplantation to SCID mouse, in-vitro culture in a large volume of culture medium under constant agitation and culture on embryonic chorio-allantoic membrane within a hen's eggs. The ai...

Ovarian cryopreservation before chemotherapy and autotransplantation post-treatment can restore fertility to women with premature ovarian failure. Although the majority of primordial follicles survive the cryopreservation cycle, the follicular pool is reduced after transplantation due to ischemic death. Therefore, we engineered a biomaterial-based system to promote angiogenesis in a mouse model...

Hepatists C Virus is a RNA virus belonging to the Fl aviriridae family. It has been seen in previous studies that HCV infection perse is associated with reduced ovarian reserve and higher cycle cancellation rate in ovarian cycles. Simultaneously treatment of HCV with Pegylated Interferon (PEG-IFN) and ribavirin (RBV) is known to affect the ovarian reserve. Although there are some controversial ...

INTRODUCTION In vitro activation and growth of primordial dormant follicles to produce fertilizable oocytes would provide a useful instrument for fertility preservation. The employment of Phosphatase and TENsin homolog (PTEN) inhibitors, in combination with Protein kinase B (Akt) stimulating molecules, has been previously employed to increase follicular activation through the stimulation of the...

OBJECTIVE To determine the effect of storage duration on cryopreserved ovarian tissue using fresh and frozen-thawed samples. METHODS Seventeen fertile patients underwent an ovarian biopsy during elective laparoscopic tubal ligation. The tissue sample was divided into three parts: one part was processed fresh (FG), and two were slowly frozen, cryopreserved for 30 (G30) or 180 days (G180), thaw...