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It will take many years for the artificial ovaries to become a reality but the first step has already been made and it looks definitively promising : for the first time the structures that surround Immature oocytes (ovarian follicles) have been isolated and cultured on a "scaffold of ovarian tissue deprived of their cells", so that they are able to function.
"It's a test for preserving the fertility of the ovaries. women who have to deal with remedies that could put them at risk," said research coordinator Susanne Pors , from the Laboratory of Reproductive Biology of Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.
The result was presented at the Congress of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) underway in Barcelona. The objective is to enable women to undergo cancer treatments to preserve fertility under safe conditions
Currently ovarian tissue is preserved before treatment and frozen to be reimplanted ] and the Pors research group is among the pioneers in this field, with ovarian tissue of 1100 patients preserved over the last 20 years, of which 115 were thawed and transplanted to 90 women
. removing cells from frozen ovarian tissue and transferring vital follicles could avoid the risk of reintroducing malignant cells potentially present in the original tissue. The experiments were performed with ovarian tissue taken by women wishing to save it before facing a cancer therapy.
The first step was to eliminate the cells present in the tissue by means a chemical process that lasts three days . In this way, a sort of scaffold was obtained in which the follicles were reimplanted. " We saw that the follicles were able to repopulate the tissue with cells ," Pors explains, referring to experiments done in the laboratory. test tube. Later, the artificial ovary thus obtained was transferred to a mouse, demonstrating that it was able to support egg growth, with a very reduced risk for the transfer of malignant cells.
"The next step," said the researcher. will be to understand how the ovary develops with this technique with observation periods up to 6 months. "As for the first human tests," it will take still many, many years, "he said.
" This is an important first step towards the creation of a new ovary ", concludes Pors.
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