Physical aspects of the artificial ovary : characterization of human ovarian tissue and fibrin scaffolds

Details

Supervisors

Demoustier-Champagne, Sophie ; Andrade Amorim, Christiani

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil biomédical

Abstract

While the number of girls and young women reached by cancer increases year upon year, improvements in cancer treatments allow to cure most of them. However, these treatments can result in premature ovarian failure. To solve this problem, several fertility preservation and restoration techniques are already available. Nevertheless, for patients at prepubertal stage or that cannot postpone their cancer treatment, cryopreservation and transplantation of ovarian tissue is the only available option. Eventhough this technique has shown to be successful, it is not advisable for patients with certain types of cancer, since there is a risk of reintroducing malignant cells present in the cryopreserved tissue, which could lead to the recurrence of the primary disease. For these patients, research teams worldwide have been working on the development of a transplantable artificial ovary, which consists in the encapsulation of isolated ovarian preantral follicles and cells by a 3D matrix. As this matrix should ideally mimic the natural human ovary, the goal of the present study is to characterize and compare the morphological and physical properties of both human ovary and the matrix that yielded best results so far, i.e., fibrin. To this end, samples of human ovarian cortex and different fibrin formulations (F12.5/T1, F30/T50, F50/T50 and F75/T75) were analyzed using a scanning electron microscope and a shear rheometer. According to these analyzes, the fibrin hydrogels made of 30 mg/ml fibrinogen and 50 U/ml thrombin showed to be the most similar to human ovarian tissue and therefore seem to be the best candidate to encapsulate isolated preantral follicles.