A new article by members of the Oncofertility Consortium identified conditions to improve non-human primate secondary follicle growth in a three-dimensional alginate matrix. The study, "Secondary follicle growth and oocyte maturation during encapsulated three-dimensional culture in rhesus monkeys: effects of gonadotrophins, oxygen and fetuin," found that culture conditions that included feutin and decreased oxygen concentrations increased the survival and growth of follicles. The authors, Jing Xu, Richard Yeoman, K. Pau, Susan Barrett, Mary Zelinski, and Richard Stouffer, also showed that these parameters promoted primate oocyte maturation such that, for the first time, oocytes retrived from in vitro developed primate follicles displayed the ability to respond to fertilization. Read the entire Human Reproduction article.
