The Latest Stem Cell Research Into Male Factor Infertility

A look at what fertility experts have been up to in the lab to advance infertility treatments for men.

Scientists in America are theorizing that low sperm count or a total absence of sperm may be caused by a fault in the genes where germ cells are either not present or fail to release in the correct manner (think of the word germinate and the process which happens with flowers; a similar process is needed to be triggered by germ cells before sperm can be produced).

Researchers are hoping to replace non-functioning germ cells with new ones to enable men to start producing sperm.

They collected bone marrow stem cells from infertile mice who had been made infertile either by chemicals or genetic manipulation and injected these cells into their testes. These cells then developed the properties of germ cells and managed to survive in the testes for 12 weeks.

However, these cells didn't fully develop into sperm, so more research is needed to understand why. Scientists are optimistic that it will lead to treatments for men to generate healthy sperm.

Human Testing

Similar British Scientists have also been experimenting with the same technique using male volunteers. They induced the bone marrow cells to develop into early sperm cells.

Professor Nayernia, from the North East England Stem Cell Research Institute, said

'We are very excited about this discovery. Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatogonial cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments.'

Professor Nayernia also said it was possible to grow sperm cells from females as they had done this in the experiments with female mice.

This presents a huge ethical dilemma, though, and one would wonder where they would obtain the Y male chromosome from with which to produce male sperm?

The British government is currently considering legistlation which would place a ban on artificially created eggs and sperm so Professor Nayernia's research, and others like him, may be stopped from practicing.

No one knows how altering the genetic structure of cells (from bone marrow or any other area of the body) would affect how it functions. It is possible that artificially grown sperm samples may cause permanent genetic changes and be too dangerous to use in IVF.

Looking further into the future, one would speculate that if they did manage to use these samples for IVF, there could be complications to any children born via this method, and how would they know, prior to birth, just how these children were going to turn out?

Professor Robin Lavell Badge, from the National Institute of Medical Research, discounted some of Professor Nayernia's research papers, stating that it is impossible for women to produce sperm since they lack the genetic makeup to do so.