Xenografting of isolated human follicles in fibrin scaffold associated to hyaluronan: preliminary results

Transplantation of cryopreserved ovarian tissue is one of the alternatives to restore fertility in cancer survivors. However, this technique is not advisable for patients with certain types of cancer, since there is a risk of reintroducing malignant cells present in the cryopreserved tissue. For these patients, a safer alternative could be transplantation of isolated preantral follicles back to their natural environment. To encapsulate and protect isolated follicles, a matrix should be created. To this end, we have been testing different polymers to embed murine follicles. Our best results were obtained with a fibrin formulation containing low concentrations of fibrinogen and thrombin[1]. Despite these promising results with mouse follicles, our findings with human isolated preantral follicles were significantly inferior. The goal of this study was therefore to evaluate if a fibrin formulation with higher concentrations of fibrinogen and thrombin could improve survival of human isolated be suitable as a matrix to graft isolated human preantral follicles. Moreover, we would like to test if supplementation of the fibrin matrix with hyaluronan (HA) could also have a positive effect on follicle survival and growth