Fertility preservation in male patients subjected to chemotherapy; innovative approaches for further progress

About 4% of male cancer patients are under the age of 35. With the current increase in efficacy and safety of the therapies, a growing number of young adults can long-termly survive. In male patients receiving systemic chemotherapy and or bone marrow transplantation, a permanent loss of fertility is a common side effect. The only possibility to preserve the patient’s fertility is to spare the gametes or the gametes forming cells from the chemotherapeutic effect. In adults, this could be achieved by the cryopreservation of spermatozoa with the subsequent application of assisted reproductive technology.
The sperm cryopreservation is currently performed using the slow rate cryopreservation as a standard method, where the sperm cells are incubated with a cryoprotective medium and slowly subjected to hypothermia in the liquid nitrogen (LN) vapor before they are placed in the LN. Another technique called vitrification relies on the direct placement of the cells into LN, after being suspended in a vitrification medium. Many studies compared the clinical outcome of both techniques to reveal equivalent results. This paper sheds the light on some innovative remarks for further progress.