PEKING University Shenzhen Hospital in Futian District has successfully obtained and cryopreserved the ovarian tissue of a young woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer but showed a strong desire to preserve her fertility.

This is Shenzhen’s first ovarian tissue cryopreservation (OTC) carried out by the hospital’s fertility preservation center, the hospital said Tuesday.

Wu Ruifang, fertility preservation center director, said that the young woman, who is in her 30s, was diagnosed with breast cancer a month ago and needed adjuvant chemoradiotherapy.

When the patient learned that chemoradiotherapy may cause serious damages to her ovarian tissue and that she may be unable to have children in the future, she told the doctor that she had never given birth and expressed a strong desire to preserve her fertility.

The hospital successfully obtained part of the patient’s ovarian tissue through minimally invasive laparoscopy and transferred the extracted tissue to the laboratory for cryopreservation Aug. 12.

According to Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, the OTC project is the hospital’s key clinical research project.

According to the hospital, its OTC project targets female patients with malignant tumors from age 10 to 35 who are willing to preserve their fertility. The fertility preservation center helps these young women who suffer from diseases such as leukemia, aplastic anemia, lymphoma, breast cancer and early-stage cervical cancer, freeze part of their ovarian tissue before chemoradiotherapy.

After the treatment is completed, the ovarian tissue will be thawed and transplanted back to the patient to make pregnancy possible again.

(Zhang Yu)