GOAL:

To achieve the long-expected pregnancy...

To achieve the long-expected pregnancy.
Egg donation has become a social demand in all Assisted Reproduction Units in the world. 
However, there seems to be little awareness among the people of the possibility of egg donation.  This is due primarily to the fact that it is a very young technique – the first case in the world of a baby born from donor eggs occurred in 1984 in the United States.

Moreover, there is a certain taboo coming mainly from social groups with no sterility problems who shy from their commitment regarding this issue.

It is also true that egg donation is a highly technical and selective issue.  For this reason, all the parties involved should make an effort at providing clear, simple and actual information about it.
The decision regarding donor stimulation is based on the individual characteristics of the woman according to age, weight, and analytical and ultrasonographic findings.

Consequently, the goal is to design a personalized stimulation approach for each donor, controlled according to the individual response and adjusted in such a way that it is Mild, Effecive and Risk-Free Cecolfes, under the scientific leadership of Dr Elkin Lucena, launched the first cryobank of human oocytes in Colombia and Latin America on March 18, 2004, using the Cryotop vitrification technique developed in Japan in 2001 by doctor Masashige Kuwayama.

 Vitrification

 Alternative to embryo freezing: 

- Medical, gynecological and hormonal assessment

- Controlled ovarian hyperstimulation
 
- Transvaginal oocyte aspiraton 
 
- Assessment of retrieved oocytes for vitrification viability
 
- Vitrification: freezing from 37 ºC to –196 ºC (liquid nitrogen)
 
- Cryobank storage during the time determined by each patient
 
- Devitrification: thawing from –196 ºC to 37 ºC and incubation for 2-4 hours
 
- Fertilization by ICSI
 
- Embryo culture for 72 hours 
 
- Embryo transfer to the uterus 

Women who are predisposed for different reasons to premature ovarian failure, i.e. early menopause before 40 years of age, can also benefit from the possibility of freezing their eggs before their pool is depleted.

Procedure

Women working in areas that may affect their hormonal and reproductive system like flight attendants, radiologists, soldiers, chemists, among others.

Premature ovarian failure:

Professional risks:

Professional women who have to delay childbearing for career, training, job transfers or other reasons.

Women wishing to retard the biological clock of motherhood: 

Women affected by some types of diseases that endanger the viability of their ovaries and eggs as a result of chemo or radiotherapy, or because of the need for ovary removal.

Male factor:

Couples in whom semen cannot be collected on the day of the transvaginal oocyte aspiration procedure because of their treatment or some other reason, making it impossible to proceed with the fertilization.  

Low ovarian response:

Women who respond poorly to drugs where only 2 or 3 occytes are retrieved in each procedure despite the stimulation regimes.  In these cases, it is ideal to store the eggs of 2 or 3 hormonal inductions that are later devitrified, thus enhancing pregnancy probabilities.


Oncologic Patients:

Couples undergoing some form of assisted reproduction procedure (IVF, ICSI, MIFT, IVM,PGD) and choose oocyte cryopreservation over embryo cryopreservation when there are supernumerary eggs, i.e. more than 4 or 5 viable eggs for fertilization, or in the case of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS) in response to hormonal induction, or when embryo transfer in the same cycle is contraindicated.

With the passage of time, like all other cells in the human body, but unlike spermatozoa, eggs undergo aging and they loose their quality and ability to fertilize and undergo normal embryo development after 35 years of age.  Therefore, the probability of a woman conceiving a child of her own genetic lineage drops until the onset of menopause.  Today, vitrification is an option to save young eggs for a later stage, with the assurance that the woman can bear a child from her own young and healthy oocytes.

Thanks to the advances in biotechnology, cryotop vitrification is now available.  It consists of ultrafast freezing with high-speed cooling at a rate of approximately –23.000 ªC per minute with minimal high-concentration cryoprotectant volumes.  As the name implies, cells are taken to a state similar to glass with no ice crystal formations.  The egg is totally dehydrated before it is frozen, thus avoiding any structural damages.

 
The first live birth in the world from a frozen oocyte was achieved by Dr. Cheng in Korea in 1986 using the slow-curve freezing technique.  As the name implies, cooling happens at a low speed of -0.2 ºC per minute.  So far, close to one hundred babies have been born in the world using this technique.

Many cryopreservation techniques have existed for more than 50 years for cryopreservation of cells, tissues, semen and embryos, but oocytes had not been easy to freeze and maintain alive at temperatures under 0°C.  The difficulty is associated in part with size, considering that the egg is the largest cell in the human body and contains large quantities of water which, when frozen, promotes the formation of large ice crystals that break and damage its delicate structures causing it to die or producing fertilization failures in the event it survives.
 

Why is it innovative? 

FIRST EGG BANK IN LATIN AMERICA