Advances in goat artificial ovary

The majority of thousands of oocytes in the ovaries are small, non-growing and reside in preantral follicles (PFs). The development of a culture system for preantral follicle may be very useful for understanding the complex mechanism in folliculogenesis at early stages of development as wells as could offer a significant way for the propagation of livestock, including goats. The in vitro follicular culture aims to mimic what happens with a few preovulatory follicles, which escapes from atresia and ovulate. For this reason, this technique is also known as “artificial ovary”. This abstract describes the results of a number of studies aimed to evaluate the effects of several substances on in vitro culture of caprine preantral follicles highlighting the many advances, limitations and prospects.