Host sperm cells were first used in an attempt to restore fertility

“What we expected from this initial transplant was to demonstrate that the method was safe and that it was feasible,” says Orvig. Ultrasounds show that HSU testes were unharmed by the procedure and its hormone levels were in the normal range. So far, his semen has no sperm yet.

More transplants may soon occur. The Orwig team has been a bank testicular tissue from children since 2011, and now some of these patients are entering reproductive age. His group has obtained permission from an institutional examination council to perform stem cell transplants as well as testicular tissue as part of A Clinical trialS

The transplantation of immature tissue tissue is an alternative approach that researchers examine. In this technique, a piece of preserved tissue is tucked under the skin of the scrotum. The hope is that the fabric will mature and eventually produce semen. In MonkeyOrvig and his team transplant tissue tissue, then removed this grafted fabric from eight to 12 months later and extracted sperm from it. They used the semen to fertilize the eggs and transfer the resulting embryos into a surrogate from the female macaque, which led to a live birth.

To extract the semen, the cut tissue is cut from the skin – less an invasive procedure than the transplantation of stem cells, which requires the opening of the testis.

When the Orwig team first began to collect testicular tissue, he thought they would receive more stem cells by isolating them first from the tissue and then freezing them. They did this with their first few patients, including HSU. But later, they discovered that they could get just as much stem cells or more than cryo -strengthening whole pieces of tissue, and later thaw them and extract the cells. This meant that HSU could only undergo stem cell transplantation because only its cells were frozen. Other patients who have frozen whole pieces of tissue will be able to try or transplantation of stem cells or tissues.

In January researchers from VRIJE Universiteit Brussel and Brussels IVF in Belgium have announced that they have fulfilled First transplantation of tissue tissues in a patient who has undergone chemotherapy in childhood. The patient will be monitored for one year and his sperm will be tested for semen. In a year, doctors will remove some of the transplanted tissue pieces to check for semen.

“For those patients who receive life -saving cancer therapies, as a result, they are often left with constantly impaired fertility,” says Robert Branigan, elected president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and Professor of Urology at the Northwestern University. “It is difficult to say which approach will be the one who is more effective, but I think both approaches are really worthy of a more exploration.”

A similar procedure, called ovarian tissue transplantation, is available for patients with women’s cancer and has led to more than 200 live births worldwide. It is more pre -freezing and transplantation of the testes, since in adult men they need chemotherapy, it is usually possible to freeze sperm, while equivalent practice in women – free eggs – can take two to three weeks and patients may not have time to undergo chemotherapy before starting chemotherapy. When the freezing of eggs is not possible, a piece of ovarian tissue can be collected and stored for later use.

“It is very nice to see that we are catching up a little so that we can offer our young men the same types of opportunities that we can offer to our young women,” says Jonathan Ruth, a pediatric urologist at Duke Health. “Keeping children alive is always the number one goal, but it allows them to live, that life is really the number two goal and I think this study will really affect the future.”

HSU realizes that technology is still in the early stages and may not work for it. Even if there is no biological child, he hopes these techniques will eventually open options for other cancer patients in childhood. “This is a practice that just starts,” he says. “The more support, the more research and more data we have, the better for people like me along the line.”