Seeking a Better Living Laboratory, Researchers Create the First "Artificial" Ovary
Artificial Ovaries Top row: The honeycomb theca cells begin to envelop the human eggs. Bottom row: The artificial ovary at two days and five days. Carson Lab / Brown University While trying to create a better synthetic environment in which to study how ovarian cells develop and interact, a Brown University researcher and her colleagues have created the first working artificial ovary. Using special "3-D Petri dishes" and samples of donor cells, the team has already created an artificial organ that has carried human eggs through to maturity. To do so, they had to coax the three main cell types found in the human ovary into particular three-dimensional structures. The means for doing so were found in a special moldable agarose gel, dubbed 3-D Petri dishes, that encourage cells to grow into certain shapes and structures. The researchers first created honeycomb-like structures out of donated theca cells, one of the main cell...