Diseases and infertility, now we think of an artificial ovary

BARCELONA – Recovery of oocytes or ovarian tissue before subjecting a woman to treatment that impairs her fertility, since chemotherapy is – or should be – an accepted and consolidated practice. But the risk – real, even rare – is that the disease can "pbad" into cells and tissues and it can reappear later. So, how to do it? The idea – presented at the Thirty-Fourth Congress Eshre The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, which now sees in Barcelona ten thousand specialists from around the world, is to create a kind of Artificial ovary in which to grow follicles. The Danish group of Rigshospitalet of Copenhagen has succeeded, one of the most active and experienced in the field of fertility preservation and ovarian tissue freezing, to which many congress sessions are devoted.

We can not talk about an artificial ovary, of course. Not yet at least. But the direction is this one and today Susanne Pors presents the results: she and her group isolated for the first time then developed a human follicle taken very early from frozen tissues until To what happens at the defined point of biofunctionality. This follicle was grown in a bioengineered structure, just a kind of artificial ovary, made up of decellularized ovarian tissue, without the cells that made it up. And it's the first time that a human follicle, which is an immature oocyte, has managed to survive in a bioengineered model

• HOW IT WORKS
Cells were removed from the Ovarian tissue frozen by a chemical procedure three days ago getting what in jargon is called scaffolding, or a structure on which the follicles were implanted, which had shown in vitro to be able to migrate and repopulate a structure. Then implanted on mice, the structure has shown that it can work and be able to survive and grow follicles. This process of removing ovarian tissue cells – according to the researchers – would eliminate the possibility of reintroducing the malignant cells present in the original tissue, considering that generally the freezing of ovarian tissue is proposed to women with cancer before chemotherapy treatments or radiation therapy that reduces or even destroys ovarian function. Possibility that Pons has defined real, especially for leukemic patients and with ovarian cancer. Although very small

Denmark is one of the countries where freezing ovarian tissue – still considered experimental – has become an accepted method of preserving fertility and reimbursed by the health system. "We freeze not only tissue from cancer patients, but also other women who need radiation therapy or chemotherapy for other conditions. We estimate that about 80 % of all Danish patients could benefit from our studies. , the largest number of activities in Europe by population.

• TECHNIQUES FOR CONSERVATION OF FERTILITY
Eleonora Porcu Director of the Center for Infertility and PMA of the Polyclinic Sant Orsola of Bologna adds that It is fundamental to remember that the simplest and least invasive fertility conservation technique, with increased application and results, is the cryopreservation of the oocytes with which the first pregnancy in the world has been obtained. in 2007 "

The expert also adds three points in this regard, reiterating that" the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue is defined by the ASRM as yet experimental m etodica and that the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue is a invasive method while cryopreservation of ovarian tissue in cancer patients exposes to the risk of replanting malignant cells infiltrated into frozen tissue, thawed and transplanted "

According to the expert, so" the study in question is motivated by this risk which is one of the most important reserves for the large-scale application of ovarian tissue freezing. The decellularization experiment of ovarian tissue is interesting from a speculative point of view and probably opens perspectives to reduce the oncological risk of replanting ovarian tissue. "For now, however, the actual effectiveness of the whole process and the functional capacity of the follicles The cryopreservation and reimplantation of ovarian tissue in certain types of neoplasias such as leukemia remain burdened by the potential risk of reintroduction of malignant cells which must be evaluated very carefully. "