del227.fm Page 1 Tuesday, May 30, 2006 12:23 PM ARTICLE IN PRESS Human Reproduction Page 1 of 12 doi:10.1093/humrep/del227 Cryopreservation of intact human ovary with its vascular pedicle Mohamed A.Bedaiwy1,2, Mahmoud R.Hussein3, Charles Biscotti4 and Tommaso Falcone1,5 1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, USA, 5 2Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 3Department of Pathology, Assiut University Hospitals and School of Medicine, Assiut, Egypt and 4Anatomic Pathology Department, Minimally Invasive Surgery Center, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH, USA 5To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, A81, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195, USA. E-mail:
[email protected] 10 BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to assess the immediate post-thawing injury to the human ovary that was cryopreserved either as a whole with its vascular pedicle or as ovarian cortical strips. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Bilateral oophorectomy was performed in two women (46 and 44 years old) undergoing vaginal hysterectomy and laparoscopic hysterectomy, respectively. Both women agreed to donate their ovaries for experimental research. In both patients, one of the harvested ovaries was sectioned and cryopreserved (by slow freezing) as ovarian cortical 15 strips of 1.0 ´ 1.0 ´ 5.0 mm3 each. The other ovary was cryopreserved intact with its vascular pedicle. After thawing 7 days later, follicular viability, histology, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT)-mediated dUTP-digoxigenin nick-end labelling (TUNEL) assay (to detect apoptosis) and immunoperoxidase staining (to define Bcl-2 and p53 pro- tein expression profiles) of the ovarian tissue were performed.