For blood cancer survivors, a fertility preservation treatment generating eggs in culture by using their own cryopreserved ovarian tissue does not yet exist. This could be due to culture media missing crucial factors that exist in the circulation. We showed that mouse ovarian follicles do indeed grow better in culture supplemented with mouse serum. By identifying that there are additional factors in mouse serum that improve mouse ovarian follicle development, this paves the way to identify these molecules, which would likely be informative for humans. Image by Sabriya Abdul Kader.

This article belongs to the collection: The biology of the ovary – Honouring the contributions of Ken P McNatty and Rex J Scaramuzzi.