FOLLICULAR DEVELOPMENT, OVULAR 



MATURATION AND OVULATION IN OVARIAN 



TISSUE TRANSPLANTED TO THE EYE 



R. W. NoYEs, T. H. Clewe and A. M. Yamate 



Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology 



Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California 



Previous studies on ovarian tissue transplanted into the anterior chamber of 

 the eye have been mainly concerned with the ovary as an endocrine organ. 

 Although both ovulation and follicular hemorrhage have been reported (7, 1 3), 

 little attention has been paid to the maturation of ova in the anterior chamber 

 of the eye. Our interest has been to obtain mature fertile ova from primordial 

 follicles after the ovary has been removed from the body. Similar attempts, 

 using tissue culture methods (4, 8, 14) have failed, and ova removed from the 

 ovarian follicles do not mature normally in vivo (9) or in vitro (11), though 

 certain nuclear changes simulate meiosis (2). 



Follicles are maturing and undergoing atresia concomitantly in the 

 mammalian ovary, and there is no way to distinguish a growing from an 

 atretic follicle by inspecting the ovary at any particular time of the cycle. 

 In order to correlate the growth rate of a follicle with the maturity of its 

 contained ovum, it is essential that the follicle be observed continuously. We 

 have taken advantage of the remarkable tolerance of the anterior chamber 

 of the eye for both interspecies and intraspecies transplants to study follicular 

 growth and ovulation. 



MATERIALS AND METHODS 



Whole fetal ovaries, halves of immature ovaries and fractions of adult 

 ovaries without corpora lutea were transplanted, using Goodman's technique 

 (5), to the anterior chamber of the eyes of 1296 albino rats of the Sprague- 

 Dawley strain. In most cases the donor animals were 25 days old, since it 

 was found that about that period of time was required for the ovaries of 

 newborn rats to develop a degree of follicle growth sufficient to insure 

 adequate response to the gonadotropic hormones. The host animals included 

 males and females, also 25 days old, both intact and gonadectomized. 



In a typical experiment, half an ovary from a black pigmented donor rat 

 was placed in the anterior chamber of the eye of an albino male recipient rat, 



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