Baby born to woman who had tissue transplant
Process allows cancer survivor to give birth
Published: September 25, 2004
Section: Flavor/Gracious Livingront, page A 6
Source: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
© 2004- Landmark Communications Inc.
BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT


A baby born to a cancer survivor in Belgium on Thursday likely brought a surge of hope for three women who have volunteered for fertility research at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

The baby was born in Brussels to a woman who had ovarian tissue removed in 1997, frozen, and then transplanted again after chemotherapy rid her body of cancer. The healthy 8-pound, 3-ounce baby was presented to the world at a news conference Friday.

The pioneering effort by doctors at the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc Hospital is being closely watched by reproductive researchers across the globe and in Hampton Roads. Dr. Sergio Oehninger, clinical director of EVMS' Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine, said doctors there have removed and frozen ovarian tissue of three women, whose

identity and residence are being kept private, during the past two years.

All three women have cancer. The ovarian tissue was removed before the women had chemotherapy, which can make women infertile. Oehninger said an institutional review board will be examining a Jones Institute proposal to try ovarian-tissue transplants in the women, if they reach a point of being cancer-free and want to have children.

He said it would be at least three years before that happened, because the women must be cancer-free five years before a transplant is attempted. But Thursday's birth in Belgium - the first of its kind - shows the concept may work. "It's very big news for us," Oehninger said.

In the Belgium case, Dr. Jaques Donnez cut ovarian tissue from a woman named Ouarda Touirat before she underwent chemotherapy, then froze it in liquid nitrogen. Five years after she was cleared of cancer, the tissue was grafted back onto her fallopian tubes, allowing for a natural pregnancy. Experts in the field were cautious about the report, however, saying there was a small chance the baby came from existing ovaries rather than the transplanted tissue.

If the birth did result from the transplant, though, it will provide valuable information for other researchers looking into the method. In fact, Oehninger said he already talked by telephone Friday with the team who did the procedure in Belgium.

Oehninger said EVMS started research in 2000 in which a similar procedure was tried in monkeys. The ovarian tissue was removed and transplanted back into the monkeys, both in frozen and non frozen states. The monkeys subsequently began producing hormones and ovulating, which are functions of healthy ovaries. The experiment did not include pregnancy attempts.

Oehninger said the EVMS experiments transplanted the ovarian tissue into the monkeys' arms, under the skin. To produce a pregnancy in such a method, eggs would need to be produced by the ovary tissue in the arm, harvested by doctors, and fertilized in a lab before being implanted in the womb.

Now, though, the local researchers will also look more closely at the Belgium method, in which the tissue was grafted onto the woman's fallopian tubes.

A growing number of women are surviving cancer and desiring to have children. But chemotherapy can make them infertile. The ovarian tissue transplant is just one procedure EVMS is attempting for cancer survivors. Oehninger said some women who have found out they have cancer have had eggs retrieved from their ovaries at EVMS before chemotherapy, and had the eggs fertilized with their partners' sperm. Then the embryos are frozen and implanted after the women are cancer-free.

A more recent technique is retrieving eggs and freezing them. Oehninger said that method tends to be less successful than the use of frozen embryos, but cancer victims who don't have husbands or partners sometimes want to try that method.

The woman in Belgium had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1997. She named her newborn daughter Tamara.

"I am very happy, it's what I always wanted," Touirat said Friday. "I was crying at first, it's a dream ? a big miracle," said the 32-year- old mother.

Donnez said health authorities should make it "a medical legal obligation" to offer women who have to undergo chemotherapy the option for fertility preservation.

"This is the way to go," Donnez said. "Because of the progress ? made by medicine, more and more women are survivors of cancer."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

* Reach Elizabeth Simpson at

446-2635 or elizabeth.simpson@

pilotonline.com.