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. 2020 Jul 31;21(15):5471. doi: 10.3390/ijms21155471

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© 2020 by the authors.

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Suggested options for male fertility preservation. Adult patients, if they have sperm in the semen (option #1), can cryopreserve it for ART. If they do not have sperm in their semen, the second option is to use testicular tissue (option #2). If sperm is found in their testicular tissue, it can be used for ICSI. If no sperm is found, then isolated spermatogonia stem cells (SSCs) could be used for in-vitro maturation to generate sperm for use in ICSI. If this technology will not work, or SSCs are not found, then somatic cells could be used to generate iPSC (option #3) and to develop SSCs, which can be used for in-vitro maturation to generate sperm for ICSI or for germ cell transplantation, which leads to generation of sperm in the testes that can normally (N) fertilize oocytes and lead to pregnancy, or if very little sperm is generated, it can be used in ICSI. In pre-pubertal patients, only options #2 and #3 can be used; they do not generate sperm at this age and therefore option #1 is excluded. In pre-pubertal patients, only options #2 and #3 can be used. Testicular biopsies if they contain SSCs (option #2), can be used for transplantation to develop sperm for ICSI, or isolated SSCs can be used either to develop sperm in the testes by germ cell transplantation, or used for in-vitro maturation to develop sperm for ICSI. If testicular tissues do not contain SSCs, then somatic cells (option #3) can be used to generate iPSCs to develop SSCs and used as mentioned above for adult patients.