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Human Reproduction, Vol. 16, No. 1, 145-147, January 2001
© 2001 European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology

The female-to-male transsexual patient: a source of human ovarian cortical tissue for experimental use

Rudy Van den Broecke1,4, Josiane Van der Elst2, Jun Liu2, Outi Hovatta3 and Marc Dhont2

1 Department of Gynaecologic Oncology, 2 Infertility Centre, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium and 3 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Karolinska Institutet, Huddinge University Hospital, Sweden

We demonstrated that ovaries removed from female-to-male transsexuals can be used as research material for ovarian cryopreservation, grafting and culture studies. A 21 year old female-to-male transsexual individual, who had been treated with androgens for 12 months, donated her ovaries removed in the sex reversal operation. She had normal numbers of, and proportions of, primordial (98.6%) and primary (1.4%) follicles in her ovarian cortex. After freezing and thawing the ovarian tissue was grafted to immuno-incompetent mice, which were stimulated by human recombinant FSH for 14 days, 10 weeks after transfer. Initiation of growth had occurred in the grafts in which only 79.4% of follicles were primordial, 17.1% primary, and in which there were also secondary and pre-antral follicles. Because long-term androgen treatment does not appear to cause depletion of the primordial follicle pool or affect the developmental capacity of the follicles, ovaries from individuals who undergo sex-reversal operations are an excellent source of tissue for research and maybe even for oocyte donation in the future.

Key words: androgens/grafts/ovarian tissue source/ovary/transsexuality

4 To whom correspondence should be addressed at: Department of Gynaecologic Oncology, Ghent University Hospital, De Pintelaan 185, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: rudy.vdb{at}pronet.be


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R. Soleimani, W. De Vos, P. Van Oostveldt, S. Lierman, R Van den Broecke, P. De Sutter, M. Dhont, and J. Van der Elst
Two novel techniques to detect follicles in human ovarian cortical tissue
Hum. Reprod., July 1, 2006; 21(7): 1720 - 1724.
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