MAN MADE INFERTILE BY CHEMOTHERAPY COULD NOW HAVE CHILDREN
A man who had his testicular tissue frozen as a boy before chemotherapy is making sperm after the sample was transplanted more than 16 years later, in a world’s first operation.
The breakthrough offers hope to boys who are forced to undergo damaging radiation treatment for cancer, which often leaves them sterile.
Unlike adults, children do not have the option to store sperm and mature eggs ahead of treatment.
Clinics have been freezing reproductive tissue in the hope it might one day restore fertility for several decades.
To date, more than 1,600 children in Britain have stored tissue, and there have been around 200 live births globally using banked ovarian tissue.
Implant success
However, the technique has never been tested in men.
In March, a team led by Vrije University Brussel, in Belgium, announced they had successfully implanted testicular tissue in a 27-year-old man who had been treated for sickle cell disease as a boy. The man is now able to produce sperm.
Their work has yet to be peer reviewed, and it is unclear whether the sperm is healthy enough to fertilise an egg and produce children, but the team hailed the breakthrough as “a huge finding”.
“Many more people will have hope that they can have biological children,” Prof Ellen Goossens, of the Vrije University, told The Guardian.
“It’s great to see for the patients for whom we already have tissue banked.”
The Belgian experts pioneered reproductive tissue banking in 2002 and it is now used by cancer centres across the world.
The patient had received high-dose chemotherapy in 2008 to destroy his own blood cells before undergoing a bone marrow transplant.
Before the treatment, the clinic surgically removed one testicle, cut it into small pieces and froze the tissue.
After going through puberty, the man was unable to produce sperm, and in 2022 he contacted a clinic asking whether he could have the tissue implanted, as he and his partner wanted to start a family and were considering IVF.
Sperm production
In 2025, four tissue fragments were grafted back into the remaining testicle and the surrounding area.
After a year inside the body, the grafts were removed for analysis and were found to be producing mature sperm, which has been collected and frozen.
Unlike real testicular tissue, the implants are not connected to the sperm duct, so they cannot enter the semen, making IVF the only option.
The experts said the study proved that testicular tissue could survive long-term cryopreservation, and successfully re-embed into the body, generating sperm.
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However, they warned that although the sperm looked normal, it is still not clear whether it can fertilise an egg and said any pregnancy would require careful monitoring.
In a preprint paper published online, they conclude: “As the patient intends to pursue biological parenthood, close monitoring of embryo development, pregnancy progression and long-term health outcomes in any resulting offspring will be essential to ensure both safety and efficacy of this fertility restoration approach.”
2026-05-04T18:25:37Z
