Against the odds

Hutchinson, Ezzie

doi:10.1038/nrc1484

Research Highlight
Published: 01 November 2004

Fertility

Against the odds

Ezzie Hutchinson

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 4, page 836 (2004)Cite this article

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Ovarian tissue was taken from a 25-year-old woman with stage IV Hodgkin&'s lymphoma, the stromal tissue was removed and 70 samples of cortex were cryopreserved. The patient then received MOPP/ABV combination chemotherapy and radiotherapy and was later shown to be disease free but amenorrhoeic and infertile.

Six years later, when the patient decided that she wanted to try for a child, the surgeon first created a peritoneal window beneath the right ovary to induce angiogenesis and neovascularization. Both ovaries were confirmed to be atrophic. At a second laporoscopy 7 days later, half of the cortical tissue samples, which all contained surviving primordial follicles, were thawed and re-implanted into the peritoneal window, which was now clearly vascularized. There is a potential risk of re-implanting malignant cells with this technique, but in this case no evidence of cancer was seen 5 months after re-implantation.

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