Journal Club - Frozen testicular tissue still viable after two decades

Male testis tissue that is cryopreserved can be reimplanted after more than 20 years and will go on to make viable sperm and best way would be to harvest, freeze, and reimplant testicular tissue, which contains stem cells, a procedure which has recently been shown in a macaque model to restore fertility, at least after short-term freezing.

This is in accordance to a new study conducted on mice and published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology,. The results may have important implications for treatment of boys with cancer, for whom chemotherapy may be preceded by harvesting and freezing of testicular tissue for eventual reimplantation.

The authors found that the long-frozen spermatogenic stem cells were able to colonize the mouse testis and generate all of the necessary cell types for successful sperm production, but not as robustly as

spermatogenic stem cells from either of the more recently harvested tissue samples. Researchers concluded that study showed that rat spermatogonial stem cells can be successfully frozen for over 20 years, transplanted into an infertile recipient animal and regenerate the ability to produce sperm. This could provide a method to recover the loss of fertility in pre pubertal boys treated for cancer.