Question: what made you thinkof the idea freezing the overys?

Vicki Onions answered on 14 Jun 2010:

Hello!
Unfortunately it wasn’t my idea to freeze the whole ovary (I wish it had been!)
People have been trying (and succeeding) to freeze ovarian tissue since the 1950’s!! But back in those days cancer survival rates were so low, the need for freezing ovarian tissue just wasn’t there! However in the 1990’s interest increased in the technique as survival rates increased and more people were surviving and wanted to have children. So since then people have been freezing away ovarian tissue and grafting it back (both in animals and women). The more they did this, the more it became obvious that the time the ovarian tissue worked for was relatively short (as the number of eggs contained in this small piece of tissue was obviously limited and as they were ovulated they quickly ran out). And so this started to get people thinking that if they were able to freeze the whole ovary, this would allow a greater number of eggs to be stored and therefore the ovary would work for longer. So that is what gave scientists the idea to try this.
For me personally, one of my lecturers while i was an undergraduate student was one of the scientists involved in some of the early work with freezing ovarian tissue and he was keen to develop the technique for whole ovaries. So I began a PhD (the next type of qualification after an undergraduate degree) studying freezing whole ovaries with him. We got some interesting results and so we managed to get some more money to continue the work and thats how i got where i am now!!