Male fertility preservation and restoration strategies for patients undergoing gonadotoxic therapies†

Tran, Kien T D; Valli-Pulaski, Hanna; Colvin, Amanda; Orwig, Kyle E

Male fertility preservation and restoration strategies for patients undergoing gonadotoxic therapies†

Files

ioac072.pdf (2.01 MB)

Authors

Tran, Kien T D

Valli-Pulaski, Hanna

Colvin, Amanda

Orwig, Kyle E

Issue Date

2022-04-09

Type

Article

Language

en_US

Keywords

Fertility Preservation , Male Infertility , Spermatogonial Stem Cells , Spermatogonial Stem Cell Culture , Testicular Tissue Organ Culture , De Novo Testicular Morphogenesis , Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells , Primordial Germ Cell-Like Cells , Transplantation , Grafting , In Vitro Gametogenesis

Abstract

Medical treatments for cancers or other conditions can lead to permanent infertility. Infertility is an insidious disease that impacts not only the ability to have a biological child but also the emotional well-being of the infertile individuals, relationships, finances, and overall health. Therefore, all patients should be educated about the effects of their medical treatments on future fertility and about fertility preservation options. The standard fertility preservation option for adolescent and adult men is sperm cryopreservation. Sperms can be frozen and stored for a long period, thawed at a later date, and used to achieve pregnancy with existing assisted reproductive technologies. However, sperm cryopreservation is not applicable for prepubertal patients who do not yet produce sperm. The only fertility preservation option available to prepubertal boys is testicular tissue cryopreservation. Next-generation technologies are being developed to mature those testicular cells or tissues to produce fertilization-competent sperms. When sperm and testicular tissues are not available for fertility preservation, inducing pluripotent stem cells derived from somatic cells, such as blood or skin, may provide an alternative path to produce sperms through a process call in vitro gametogenesis. This review describes standard and experimental options to preserve male fertility as well as the experimental options to produce functional spermatids or sperms from immature cryopreserved testicular tissues or somatic cells.

Citation

Tran, K., Valli-Pulaski, H., Colvin, A., & Orwig, K. E. (2022). Male fertility preservation and restoration strategies for patients undergoing gonadotoxic therapies†. Biology of reproduction, 107(2), 382–405. https://doi.org/10.1093/biolre/ioac072

Publisher

Biology of Reproduction