A woman who had ovarian tissue frozen at 18 after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer has become a mother at 44 following pioneering fertility treatment.
Kassandra Bacon was only days from her 19th birthday in 2001 when doctors diagnosed her with Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare type of blood cancer.
Although she pleaded with doctors to protect her chances of having children, she was told that urgent, high-dose chemotherapy was essential to save her life.
Still, Ms Bacon refused to abandon the possibility of becoming a mother. She successfully pushed for an experimental procedure at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge before her treatment began.
Doctors removed and froze a thin section of her ovarian tissue, preserving it in the hope that it could eventually be transplanted back into her body.
Twenty-five years later, that hope became reality when Ms Bacon gave birth to her son, David, on September 9 using the ovarian tissue preserved when she was a teenager.
The case has been described as a “global scientific milestone” because it marks the longest recorded period ovarian tissue has been stored before being transplanted and ultimately leading to a pregnancy.
The breakthrough could offer fresh hope to thousands of women whose fertility is threatened by cancer treatment.
Pictured: Kassandra Bacon with her son David, born 25 years after her ovarian tissue was frozen in what has been hailed as a “global scientific milestone”
Ms Bacon discovered she was pregnant on Christmas Day in 2025
Ms Bacon’s ovarian tissue was frozen in May 2001 by an NHS team led by embryologist Martyn Blayney, at a time when the treatment was still considered experimental and its success was far from certain.
The procedure involved preserving tiny pieces of ovarian tissue containing thousands of immature eggs.
Years later, the tissue can be grafted back onto the ovaries. The aim is for it to respond to hormones, restore the menstrual cycle and release eggs.
Reflecting on the arrival of her son, David, Ms Bacon told The Times: “I look down at him and it is a bit surreal. He is healthy, he’s thriving, he’s such a cool, calm, little man.”
“I just thank my younger self for being so determined. I was very maternal, I just wanted to be a mother.”
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Ms Bacon survived the cancer, but chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant caused permanent damage to her ovaries. When she was 32 and ready to start a family with her partner, she was told the devastating news that she was “menopausal with no viable follicles”.
Undeterred, she began a decade-long search for a doctor willing to carry out the transplant.
The aspiring mother consulted eight fertility specialists in the UK and Brussels, but each one declined to treat her.
One major obstacle was a lack of the required paperwork. Her ovarian samples had been frozen before the UK introduced formal tissue-storage regulations in 2007.
Eventually, Ms Bacon found Professor Dror Meirow at Sheba Medical Centre in Israel, who agreed to perform the transplant. Her tissue was then transported to Israel after spending two decades in storage at Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic in Cambridge.
But, in another twist in her long journey to motherhood, Ms Bacon’s journey to Israel was delayed following the October 7 attacks and the beginning of the war in Gaza.
In May 2024, it was safe enough to travel to Israel and she had an operation to transplant her younger self’s ovarian tissue back to her ovaries.
Months later, she got her period for the first time in years which showed the procedure had worked and on Christmas Day she found out she was pregnant.
The decade-long treatment path was entirely self-funded and cost Ms Bacon £50,000.
She has started a Go Fund Me to cover the costs of the treatment.
Ms Bacon stressed that fertility restoration shouldn’t ‘depend on whether somebody can find the money’.
Dr Sara Matthews, a consultant gynaecologist in London who helped Ms Bacon, said the procedure was a ‘scientific milestone’ and she urged the NHS to provide funding to carry out ovarian tissue transplants for other women.
‘The NHS committed to doing the [ovarian tissue storage] in the first place, they should at least commit to putting it back in for them,’ she said.
The first live birth from an ovarian transplantation was in 2004, and since then about 350 babies have been born worldwide from women who have undergone the treatment.