Many conditions and diseases require treatments that are gonadotoxic (causing temporary or permanent damage to the gonads) and lead to impaired fertility or sterility for both men and women, girls and boys.

For patients who may want children in the future, the loss of fertility can have a significant and lasting impact on their quality of life and reproductive choices.

 Eggs or sperm can be cryopreserved (frozen for future use), before treatment. However, this is not possible or appropriate for all patients, highlighting the need for alternative approaches to fertility preservation. 

How the Fertility preservation Project can help

Through work conducted in collaboration with Oxford University Hospitals on the Future Fertility Programme, we have established a cryopreservation facility that stores ovary and testis samples to preserve the future fertility of children and young adults who are unable to store eggs or sperm with the aim of re-implanting the tissue once the patient has recovered and is of an appropriate age. 

However, for some patients, the tissue cannot be re-implanted because it may contain residual disease or is dysfunctional. Therefore, we need to develop techniques to generate mature eggs and sperm from cryopreserved tissue without the need for re-implantation.

Developing eggs in vitro using cryopreserved ovarian tissue is at the core of Prof. Williams' research programme. To date, we have established culture techniques that support the early stages of oocyte development using cryopreserved tissues (Walker at al 2019; published in Human Fertility) which we are buliding on to enable further development. 

Additional studies by the Williams group are also underway to develop novel ovarian tissue cryopreservation techniques and to preserve female fertility by preventing the gonadotoxic effects of chemotherapy.