Xenotransplantation of goat ovary as an alternative to analyse follicles after vitrification

Abstract

Contents The aim of this study was to evaluate the caprine preantral follicles enclosed on vitrified/warmed ovarian cortex grafted to nude BALB/mice during 1 month. The ovarian cortex from goats was fragmented (3 × 3 × 0.5 mm) and divided into four groups: fresh control, vitrified control, fresh transplant and vitrified transplant. Follicular morphology, development and density, fibrosis as well as apoptosis, and tissue revascularization were evaluated. It was also observed a significant decrease in morphologically normal preantral (primordial, transition, primary and secondary) follicles in both vitrified control and vitrified transplant treatments when compared with both fresh control and fresh transplant. However, fresh control and fresh transplant exhibited a similar percentage of developing follicles. Additionally, Vitrified control showed a significant increase in developing follicles in comparison with both fresh control and fresh transplant. Follicular density significantly decreased in all treatments in comparison with fresh control. We observed high fibrosis in both fresh transplant and vitrified transplant. The mRNA expression of caspase 3 was lower in both fresh transplant and vitrified transplant in comparison with vitrified control. In conclusion, xenotransplantation is an excellent strategy to maintain normal preantral follicle morphology after vitrification/warming of goat ovarian tissue. Yet, in order to ensure the survival and development of these follicles, it is essential to improve the revascularization of the graft.

Growth and differentiation factor - 9 (GDF-9) increases the in vitro growth rates of isolated goat early antral follicles

“…On the other hand, GDF-9 increased the daily growth rate from the first to the second third of culture, with higher values (P < 0.05) in the second third compared to control (Table 3). However, this difference dissipated in the last third of culture (days [12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Unlike ours, a previous study showed that GDF-9 promoted the in vitro growth of human preantral follicles enclosed in ovarian tissue by stimulating the proliferation and differentiation of granulosa cells (5) .…”

“…The samples were processed as described previously (12) . Three pools of 10 follicular walls (granulosa and theca cells) from early antral follicles were collected from each treatment after the culture period for total RNA isolation with the Trizol ® reagent method (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA).…”

Vitrification of canine ovarian tissue using the Ovarian Tissue Cryosystem (OTC) device

“…Also, follicular density remained unchanged after vitrification. The follicular preservation observed in this study may have occurred due to the OTC device, which is a closed system that has been used successfully in sheep (Carvalho et al, 2013;Silva et al, 2018), goats (Donfack et al, 2018), feline (Brito et al, 2018) and peccaries (Campos et al, 2019). These studies show that the OTC technique promotes efficient preservation of follicular morphology when compared to the open solid surface system (SSV), using cryotube for storage in liquid nitrogen (LN).…”

“…Thus, the type of device used in vitrification must be considered, since cryotubes and straws are commonly made from polypropylene or polyvinyl chloride that do not conduct heat and can compromise cooling rates during the process (Sansinena et al, 2012). Therefore, the Ovarian Tissue Cryosystem (OTC) device, made of stainless steel, was created and has been used successfully in several species (Brito et al, 2018;Donfack et al, 2018;Silva et al, 2018), allowing a rapid heat exchange and minimal use of the volume of vitrification solution (Carvalho et al, 2013). However, this device has never been used for vitrification of canine ovarian tissue.…”

Systematic review and meta-analysis on patented and non-patented vitrification processes to ovarian tissue reported between 2000 and 2021

“…Twelve (human: (Sheikhi et al, 2011;Khosravi et al, 2013;Fabbri et al, 2014;Klocke et al, 2014;Jafarabadi et al, 2015;Abir et al, 2016;Marschalek et al, 2021;); goat: (Carvalho et al, 2013;Faustino et al, 2015); bovine: (Shahsavari et al, 2019(Shahsavari et al, , 2020; ovine: (Silva et al, 2018)) observed no impairment of follicular morphology post-vitrification when compared to control. On the other hand, twenty-two studies (ovine: (Bandeira et al, 2015;Morais et al, 2019); goat: (Carvalho et al, 2014;Donfack et al, 2018Donfack et al, , 2019Montano Vizcarra et al, 2020); cat: (Brito et al, 2018); deer: (Gastal et al, 2018); human: (Gandolfi et al, 2006;Keros et al, 2009;Xiao et al, 2010Xiao et al, , 2017Mofarahe et al, 2015;Sanfilippo et al, 2015;Tian et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2016;Dalman et al, 2017;Barbato et al, 2018;Haino et al, 2018;Ramezani et al, 2018;Lee et al, 2019;Ramos et al, 2022) indicated that vitrification reduces the percentage of viable follicles compared to fresh follicles. Overall, there was heterogeneity (I 2 = 93%) between the studies evaluated, so a random effect model was used for the pooled estimates.…”