About 15% of couples have to deal with infertility issues and for a third of them, the design difficulties are due to male infertility. Hope for these couples may come from China. Reproductive biologists from Nanjing Medical University have indeed succeeded in generating semen function from mouse stem cells and then inject them into egg cells to produce mouse offspring.
The researchers began by exposing mouse embryonic stem cells to a chemical cocktail that allowed them to transform into germ cells. Then they exposed these cells to sex hormones like testosterone and testicular cells in order to recreate their natural environment. When all of these conditions came together, cell division (called meiosis) resulting in the production of gametes for reproduction could take place, and the stem cells transformed into functional sperm.
When it was injected into mouse egg cells and then transferred to female mice, the female mice developed embryos and gave birth to healthy, reproducing mice.
Details of this experience were published in the journal Cell stem cell .
In the near future, researchers plan to test this technique on primates.
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