Discovery may help people with fertility problems.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: World renowned developmental biologist and epigeneticist Dr. Azim Surani and his team of researchers have made primitive forms of artificial sperm and eggs in a medical feat that could transform the understanding of age-related diseases and fertility problems.
Surani, who led the work at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, England, made the early-stage sex cells by culturing human embryonic stem cells under carefully-controlled conditions for a week, reported The Guardian.
They followed the success by showing that the same procedure can convert adult skin tissue into precursors for sperm and eggs, raising the prospect of making sex cells that are genetically matched to patients.
The cells should have the potential to grow into mature sperm and eggs, though this has never been done in the lab before. The next step for the researchers will be to inject the cells into mouse ovaries or testes to see if they fully develop in the animals.
Skin cells, where legally allowed, could potentially be taken from patients and turned into genetically identical sperm or eggs for use in IVF therapies.
Skin cells from a woman could only be used to make eggs because they lack the Y chromosome. Those from a male might theoretically be turned into eggs as well as sperm, but Surani said that on the basis of current knowledge, that was unlikely.
“It’s not impossible that we could take these cells on towards making gametes, but whether we could ever use them is another question for another time,” Surani told the Guardian.
Researchers have made sperm and eggs from rodent stem cells before but have struggled do the same with human cells. In 2012, Japanese scientists created mouse eggs from stem cells and used them to make baby mice. Three years earlier, scientists at Newcastle University claimed to have made human sperm from stem cells, but their scientific paper was retracted amid allegations of plagiarism. In 2002, US researchers produced male and female mouse pups from male stem cells.
Surani’s team tried a number of different approaches before hitting on a culture process that turned up to half of the human stem cells in the dish into precursors of sperm and eggs. Over the five day process, the scientists added natural chemicals called growth factors to nudge the cells in the right developmental direction.
“It’s remarkably fast. We can now take any embryonic stem cell line and once we have them in the proper conditions, we can make these primordial cells in five to six days,” Surani said. Details of the work, a collaboration with the Weizmann Institute in Israel, are published in the journal, Cell.
Through studying the cells, scientists hope to unravel how sperm and eggs arise and mature into adult sex cells. The ability to make immature sperm and eggs from patients’ skin means scientists will be able to compare how they develop differently when they are made from healthy versus infertile people. “This is really the foundation for future work,” Surani said.
Earlier this year, Surani was awarded the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship and his ensuing research in India will be hosted by the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (InStem), said reports.
Suran was one of the first five recipients of this research award newly instituted by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to “promote cutting-edge scientific research in centers of excellence in India”.
1 Comment
This is GREAT!
Now we can make artificial people, call them corporations, and SELL THEM BY THE POUND !!!
I’m going to buy two, and make them juggle. Until I need a kidney, or something. Then, SQUICH! (finger across throat motion)