Human sperm stem cells grown in lab, an early step toward infertility treatment
Monday, July 13, 2020 - 14:20
in Biology & Nature
Infertility affects one in seven men of reproductive age worldwide. One idea for treating male sterility is spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) therapy. In this approach, sperm stem cells in the testis are transferred to a test tube, cultured and nudged into becoming fully fledged sperm. However, a key bottleneck has been identifying just the right conditions to get human SSCs to grow in the lab. There have been many attempts, but in most reported cases it was not clear whether the cells being cultured were actually SSCs, and no previously published method is routinely used.