Pregnancy hopes for cancer victims
By Mark Henderson October 17, 2003 Times Online

American Society for Reproductive Medicine conference

THE first human pregnancy after an ovarian transplant could be weeks away, the scientist who pioneered the procedure said yesterday.

A clinic in the United States has already tried to fertilise the eggs of two cancer patients who have had the operation, and a healthy pregnancy is only a matter of time, the conference in San Antonio, Texas, was told.

Kutluk Oktay, of Cornell University, who is leading the research, said his prospects of success would be greatly enhanced by this week’s announcement that a rhesus monkey with transplanted ovaries had given birth to a healthy infant, the first such success in a primate.

The developments will bring hope to thousands of women who would otherwise be left sterile by cancer treatment. These patients could have an ovary removed and frozen before starting chemotherapy, which would be thawed and re-implanted at a later date. Dr Oktay is the world’s leading expert on ovary transplantation in people: in 1997 he conducted the first procedure of its kind. He recently recovered eggs from transplanted ovaries of two patients and attempted to fertilise them.

While attempts have yet to work, Dr Oktay said the work was ongoing and that a pregnancy was not far away. “We are making significant strides,” he said. “We have been able to collect eggs, we are just not yet able to produce fertilisation.”

Both patients whose eggs Dr Oktay has tried to fertilise are cancer survivors in their forties. One contracted cervical cancer at the age of 37, the other breast cancer at 35. Should the cervical cancer patient conceive, her embryo would be carried by a surrogate mother as her treatment required a hysterectomy. The breast cancer patient should be able to carry her own child.