A WOMAN has become pregnant after having thin slices of her ovaries removed and frozen during cancer treatment, and then reimplanted. Other teams have tried IVF with eggs taken from such patients, but without success.
In 1997, Jacques Donnez鈥檚 team at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) in Belgium froze slices of the woman鈥檚 ovaries prior to her receiving chemotherapy. In February 2003 the slices were reimplanted, and 11 months later the woman, who is in her thirties, became pregnant.
鈥淪he fell pregnant completely naturally, through having sex,鈥� Donnez told a radio station last month. 鈥淪he is very happy.鈥� The woman is expected to give birth to a girl in October, a university spokesman told New Scientist.
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鈥淭his is fantastic,鈥� says Claus Yding Andersen of the University Hospital of Copenhagen in Denmark, whose team has tried reimplantation. 鈥淚t is definitely a breakthrough and has lots of implications for lots of women around the world.鈥� The technique is being developed mainly to preserve fertility in cancer patients, but it could also be used as an alternative to freezing mature eggs, so women who want to delay childbirth can become pregnant later in life.
Some experts are sounding a note of caution. It is possible that what remained of the woman鈥檚 ovaries recovered spontaneously, they say. It will be hard to tell exactly where the egg came from.