In this sub-project, the focus is on investigations into fertility protection in women and girls.

Fertility protection is particularly important before cytotoxic therapies for oncological diseases, but also in patients with pronounced endometriosis, in transgender* people or in healthy women who, for various reasons, want to postpone their family planning to a later stage of life or already have a very low egg reserve at a young age.

• Improvement of existing techniques for the cryopreservation of ovarian tissue
• Investigation and establishment of tissue-sparing cryopreservation techniques for pre-pubertal/pre-pubertal ovarian tissue (CAM model)
• Analysis of molecular biological differences between prepubertal and mature ovarian tissue
• Further development of protocols for the in vitro maturation of primordial follicles from mature and prepubertal ovarian tissue
• Analysis of cycle-dependent factors in human serum for a better molecular understanding of physiological follicle maturation processes
• Investigation of molecular pathomechanistic changes in the ovarian tissue of women with endometriosis and search for possible new therapeutic approaches
• Evaluation of the situation of endometriosis patients with regard to pain, desire to have children, psychosocial stress, sexuality, partnership and fertility preservation, before and after surgery
• Assessment of the extent of fertility loss due to surgery in endometriosis patients
• Evaluation of fertility protection needs (oncological patients, endometriosis patients, transgender people, general population)