"Experts stress that the recipient, Teresa Alvaro, represents a unique case, as she has a similar tissue type to her sister, and had previously received a bone marrow transplant from her. That makes it more likely that her body would accept the ovarian transplant. What's more, the embryo did not survive. But the initial success of the procedure should give hope to women suffering from infertility as a result of ovarian damage, say the doctors responsible."

"In 1990, at age 20, Alvaro underwent treatment for an inherited disorder known as beta-thalassemia, a condition that involves the loss of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. That involved aggressive chemotherapy and radiation therapy before Alvaro received a bone marrow transplant from her 17-year-old sister, Sandra."

"At the time of the bone-marrow transplant, Alvaro did not have the option of removing and freezing some of her ovarian tissue to help preserve her fertility. So while the treatment cured her, the powerful chemicals also destroyed the eggs in her ovaries, along with any chance she had of naturally conceiving a child."

"In 2005 Alvaro's gynaecologist confirmed she was infertile. But this bad news was soon followed by information that gave her hope: "A few months later I happened to read an article on an American woman who got pregnant after she had ovarian tissue transplanted from her twin sister," recalls Alvaro."

"She subsequently contacted Jacques Donnez, a researcher at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels, Belgium. In 2004, his team announced a "

" from ovarian tissue that had been frozen and re-transplanted into a patient that had since become infertile. "I didn't hesitate for a second and went to see Professor Donnez together with my sister [Sandra]," says Alvaro."

"In early 2006, Donnez's team took three small strips of ovarian tissue from Sandra's ovaries and transplanted them into Teresa."

"Normally, when a person receives a tissue transplant, there is a risk their immune system will recognise the tissue as foreign and begin attacking it. However, since Teresa had received a bone marrow transplant from her sister, her immune system itself was built from Sandra's cells, and therefore did not react against the ovarian tissue. For this reason, there was no need to give her immune-suppressing drugs to prevent transplant rejection."

"Seven months after the procedure, Teresa began menstruating again, and within a year of the surgery the transplanted ovarian tissue produced mature eggs. Because her husband had a low sperm count, doctors had to harvest some of these mature eggs and fertilise them in a laboratory dish using a method called "

" that reached the
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