MAXIMIZING THE FEMALE OVARIAN RESERVE - A TRANSLATIONAL PROJECT TO INCREASE THE FERTILITY POTENTIAL OF THE OVARY

As most young patients survive cancer, fertility preservation is a most relevant issue to quality of life.

Cryopreservation of ovarian tissue is an established method for fertility preservation and the only one avaliable to young girls. The tissue needs to be retransplanted later to regain fertility.

However, the method is far from perfect: most oocytes die in the retransplantation process due to hypoxia and Ischemia reperfusion injury (I/R-I).Together with Professor Kui Liu we would like to go “from bedside to bench” to find solutions to the clinical problems of avoiding hypoxia-ischemia during ovarian tissue cryopreservation and retransplantation, with emphazis on individualized diagnosis and prediction.

The aim of this proposal is to develop novel ways to cryopreserve ovarian tissues for young girls undergoing cancer therapy, and eventually be able to obtain mature eggs from small immature ovarian follicles, which is the only form avaliable in the ovaries of a young girl.

The treatment will help recover the fertility of the young cancer patients once they are ready to have their own biological children.We will conduct a controlled experimental study using rodent, primate and human ovarian tissue.

We have established an in vitro culture system for ovarian follicles and preliminary experiments with HBO precontitioning have already shown promising results.

Through the combined expertise of our groups we can explore new pathways for the diagnosis and treatment of infertility.