We describe the potential stemness of a small amount of frozen-thawed testicular tissue without sperm obtained by biopsy from six patients undergoing assisted reproductive treatment. The patients ...were diagnosed with Sertoli Cell-Only Syndrome alone or combined with maturation arrest. Trying to provide the natural stem cell niche for cultured stem cells, all isolated cells from enzymatically degraded biopsies where cultured together in different culture media and the presence of putative mesenchymal and putative pluripotent ES-like stem cells was indicated using different methods. High throughput real-time quantitative PCR followed by multivariate analysis revealed the formation of distinct cell clusters reflecting high degree of similarity and some of these cell clusters expressed the genes characteristic for pluripotent stem cells. In the presence of the follicular fluid, prepared as serum, putative testicular stem cells showed a certain degree of plasticity, and spontaneously differentiated into adipose-like and neuronal-like cells. Additionally, using differentiation protocols putative testicular stem cells were differentiated into neuronal- and pancreatic-like cells. This study shows that in assisted reproduction programmes, testicular tissue with no sperm might be an important source of stem cells, although it is discarded in daily medical practice; this requires further research.
In this retrospective study the outcomes of two protocols of controlled ovarian hyperstimulation and natural cycle in poor ovarian responders defined according to the Bologna criteria were compared ...to elucidate which approach is more suitable for the treatment of these patients. We comparatively analyzed 142 cycles of GnRH antagonist (GnRH-ant) protocol, 53 cycles of GnRH agonist (GnRH-a) protocol, and 36 natural cycles. The mean number of oocytes (2.8±1.8) and embryos (1.6±1.2) per aspiration was significantly higher in GnRH-a protocol in comparison to GnRH-ant protocol and natural cycle, but the proportion of immature, fertilized oocytes, and embryos, including the quality of transferred embryos, was very similar in all treatments. The proportion of pregnancies per oocyte aspiration did not differ significantly between treatments (18.9% after GnRH-a, 10.6% after GnRH-ant, 5.6% after natural cycle), but the live birth rate per aspiration was significantly higher after GnRH-a protocol than after GnRH-ant protocol (15.1% vs. 4.2%; p=0.024).
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