The spontaneous return of fertility after bone marrow transplantation or heterotopic grafting of cryopreserved ovarian cortical tissue has surprised many, and a possible link with stem cells has been proposed. We have reviewed the available literature on ovarian stem cells in adult mammalian ovaries and presented a model that proposes that the ovary harbors two distinct populations of stem cell...

Cryopreservation of avian ova and embryos is challenging because of the yolky structure of the egg. As an alternative, with the development of effective cryopreservation protocols, ovarian tissue cryopreservation could be used for cryobanking for birds. Pieces of ovarian tissue of week-old Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) were frozen at 0.5 degrees C/min in a programmable freezer or vitrified...

BACKGROUND Progress in oncology could improve survival rate in children, but would probably lead to impaired fertility and puberty. In pre-pubertal girls, the only therapeutic option is the cryopreservation of one ovary. Three births have been reported after reimplantation of cryopreserved mature ovary. Conversely, reimplantation of ovary preserved before puberty (defined as immature ovary) has...

The mammalian ovary contains a large number of follicles that are in various developmental stages. The largest portion of them are primordial follicles. However, throughout the female reproductive lifespan only a small proportion of these follicles will produce oocytes competent to undergo successful maturation and ovulation. The rest of the ovarian oocytes (>99.9%) undergo atresia. It would be...

BACKGROUND Aggressive anti-cancer treatments can result in ovarian failure. Ovarian cryopreservation has been developed to preserve the fertility of young women, but early graft revascularisation still requires improvement. METHODS Frozen/thawed sheep ovarian cortical biopsies were embedded in collagen matrix with or without isoform 165 of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF165) and tran...

The objective of this study was to explore the feasibility and methods of screening the residual normal ovarian tissue adjacent to orthotopic ovarian carcinomas in nude mice. Human epithelial ovarian cancer cells (OVCAR3) were subcutaneously implanted for a tumor source and ovarian orthotopic transplantation. The cancer tissue, proximal paraneoplastic tissue, middle paraneoplastic tissue, remot...

Ovarian failure is the most common cause of infertility and affects about 1% young women. One innovative strategy to restore ovarian function may be represented by development a bioprosthetic ovary, obtained through combination tissue engineering regenerative medicine.We here describe two main steps required for bioengineering ovary its ex vivo functional reassembling. The first step aims at pr...