Cryopreservation in Assisted Reproductive Technology: New Trends

Abstract

During the last few years, cryopreservation has become a relevant addition to therapeutic concepts in reproductive medicine. New data and publications have made it difficult to maintain an overview of all of the new developments and their results. The focus of interest more recently, especially with the cryopreservation of human oocytes and human ovarian tissue, has been vitrification as an interesting alternative to slow freezing methods. Even though studies investigating the slow freezing of human mature oocytes have resulted in very different survival rates, it could be an option for donor oocyte programs, in the case of threatened ovarian loss or when there is an objection to embryo freezing. An optimal freezing protocol and later use of thawed human ovarian tissue is still a point of discussion. There are encouraging results regarding different kinds of autotransplantation, and recently the first birth after orthotopic autotransplantation of cryopreserved/thawed human ovarian tissue was described in the literature. Independent of any objections to cryopreservation in general, vitrification is a potential and effective alternative to conventional slow cryopreservation, especially for oocytes and embryos. Vitrification might be also be an option for human ovarian tissue; however this is only in its infancy and requires much additional investigation. Our article discusses new trends and results of actual studies regarding these issues.