A nine-year-old boy with a brain tumour has become the first in the UK to have testicular tissue frozen with the hope he can have children later in life.
Nathan Crawford has undergone radiotherapy and chemotherapy to shrink his inoperable tumour but the treatment could render him infertile.
In a ground-breaking procedure, surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford have removed a wedge of testicular tissue and frozen it, and will aim to one day re-implant it into Nathan.
If the re-implantation is successful, Nathan will have a good chance of becoming a father.
Nathan has a type of tumour called a glioma, which develops from the glial cells that support the nerve cells of the brain.
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His tumour is so close to vital brain tissue that surgeons are unable to remove it without causing serious damage to important brain functions.
Nathan has undergone a course of radiotherapy and is currently having a second round of chemotherapy with the aim of shrinking the tumour.
Before he started chemotherapy, his family, who live in Cornwall, were offered the chance of testicular tissue freezing.
During keyhole surgery, which was carried out under general anaesthetic and lasted 20 to 30 minutes, surgeons removed a wedge of testicular tissue from one of Nathan's testes.
This sample contains sperm stem cells, which remain viable when slow-frozen within the small amount of testicular tissue.
