Bioengineering the ovary
(2009) First World Congress of the International Society for Fertility Preservation — Location: Brussels (10.December.2009)
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- Abstract
- Ovarian tissue cryopreservation and transplantation has been implemented worldwide as a routine procedure to safeguard fertility in cancer patients. However, grafted ovarian fragments may have a very short lifespan due to the irregular distribution of primordial follicles and their significant loss after transplantation2. Furthermore, there are still concerns about its application in patients with certain types of disease because of the risk of cancer cell transmission3. An alternative would be grafting of isolated preantral follicles. This would allow the assessment of the follicular population before grafting, and the entire process of follicular development would occur in the graft recipient. Promising results obtained after isolation and xenografting of human preantral follicles embedded in plasma clot4,5,showed that this approach is feasible and encouraged us to pursue this path, focusing on the development of a scaffold that would mimic the ovary. Applying the principles of tissue engineering, we aim to design a scaffold to embed isolated follicles and act as a template to guide tissue growth up to its final form, allowing attachment, proliferation and migration of cells, angiogenesis and transport of molecules, oxygen and nutrients, and metabolic waste removal. In addition, it would have all the positive features of a plasma clot, such as fast degradation, biocompatibility and ability to maintain the original three-dimensional structure of follicles. Finally, as an off-the-shelf living tissue product, it would be easy to handle and graft. However, developing a scaffold that aims to recreate such a complex organ requires coordinated efforts of different professionals, including clinicians, engineers, biologists, chemists, surgeons and physicists, coupled with creative ideas on the relationship between follicular survival and development, material degradation and host response. Although this challenging and exciting approach is still in its infancy, we believe that, in the near future, it will become a new field in assisted reproductive technology.
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Citations
Andrade Amorim, C. (2009). Bioengineering the ovary. First World Congress of the International Society for Fertility Preservation, Brussels. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/41105