Male Fertility Preservation: Current Options and Advances in Research

Abstract

Chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer and other conditions can cause permanent infertility. Adult and adolescent males who have reached Tanner III of pubertal development have the option to cryopreserve a semen sample with sperm prior to treatment and use their sample in the future to have biological children using established assisted reproductive technologies. This option is not available to prepubertal boys who are not yet producing mature sperm. However, these boys do have spermatogonial stem cells in their testes that are poised to initiate sperm production at puberty. Centers in the United States and abroad are actively cryopreserving testicular tissue for prepubertal cancer patients, bone marrow transplant patients, and others in anticipation that stem cell therapies will be available for them in the future. This chapter reviews the standard of care options for male patients, as well as experimental techniques, including spermatogonial stem cell transplantation, testicular tissue grafting and xenografting, testicular tissue organ culture, de novo testicular morphogenesis, and pluripotent stem cell-derived gametogenesis.