Mats Brännström, MD, PhD, was beyond skeptical when a patient undergoing a hysterectomy for cervical cancer in 1998 asked him for a uterus transplant to restore her fertility.

“I thought she was crazy,” said the professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

But the request set off a more than decade-long effort by Brännström, a fertility researcher and gynecologic surgeon, and his colleagues to determine whether transplanting a uterus was feasible. Meanwhile, groups in Saudi Arabia and Turkey sought to answer the same question. Even though they performed the first 2 human transplants, neither resulted in a successful pregnancy.