Testicular Cancer

There are multiple clinical situations where cryopreservation of sperm is required including sperm banking prior to chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer, donor sperm for couples without a male partner, and various etiologies of male factor infertility. Bunge and Sherman presented the first pregnancy resulting from the thawing of cryopreserved sperm in 1953 (Bunge RJ, Nature 172:767-768, 1953). Since that time, cryopreservation techniques have continued to improve. Here, we describe protocols for the cryopreservation and thawing of semen and testicular tissues using a simple liquid nitrogen vapor technique.

Male germ cells in all mammals are arranged within the seminiferous epithelium of the testicular tubules in a set of well-defined cell associations called stages. The cellular associations found in these stages and characteristics of the cells used to identify the stages have been well described. Here we present a binary decision key roadmap for identifying stages and present several examples of how staging tubules can be used to better assess the developmental profile of gene expression during spermatogenesis and defects in spermatogenesis arising in pathological conditions resulting from genetic mutations in mice. In particular, when one or more cells of a cellular association cannot be clearly identified or are missing, the cell types that should be present can be precisely identified by knowledge of the approximate or exact stage of the tubule cross section.

Men around the world will be growing moustaches in the month of November to raise awareness of prostate and testicular cancers, and depression in men with cancer. The global Movember movement gets men talking about their health, combats misinformation and encourages early detection of life-threatening illnesses.