At the world congress of the International Society for Fertility Preservation in Vienna in November important topics such as advances in ovarian cortex transplantation, assessment of ovarian reserve, in vitro follicle growth, medical protection from chemotherapy, reimplantation of ovarian tissue were on the agenda. Slow freezing of cryopreserved ovarian tissue (for fertility preservation in cancer patients) was a hot topic and there were a number of workshops and posters. One such - see below - was from Dmitry Nikiforov at the University of Teramo, Italy and also the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen.

Dmitry is also an ESHRE/ReproUnion fellow in the Laboratory of Reproductive Biology. He has three years of clinical experience in human embryology and now is working on a doctoral project about ovarian tissue cryopreservation and in-vitro oocyte production from the tissue. At the Laboratory of Reproductive Biology in Copenhagen (under Prof Claus Yding Andersen) he is focusing on isolation of follicles from medulla tissue discarded during cryopreservation of ovarian cortex for further in-vitro culture. Another point of interest is to evaluate an effect of additional substances to the cryopreservation medium, which may improve survival rate of the tissue as well as improve surviving after implantation of the tissue back to the patient.