Researchers have succeeded in creating viable eggs and sperms from stem cells, and have raised the hopes of couples facing infertility problems.
With this technique women having trouble in the production of eggs naturally can use their cells to create eggs and can be later implanted into their body.
The findings are based on the experiments conducted by a team of Kyoto University researchers in Japan, led by Dr. Michinori Saito on mice. The researchers collected embryonic stem cells from mice and changed some genes to create cells similar to eggs and sperms. Later these were implanted into the infertile mice. Then the fully-grown Oocytes were subjected to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and transferred into surrogate mother mice.
The mice gave birth to healthy pups, without having any reproductive problems.
"Our system serves as a robust foundation to investigate and further reconstitute female germline development in vitro, not only in mice, but also in other mammals, including humans," AFP quoted Saito, as saying.
"This achievement is expected to help us understand further the egg-producing mechanism and contribute to clarifying the causes of infertility. We intend to continue this research with monkeys and humans."
Findings of the study have been published in the US journal Science.
Infertility is a term used to explain the inability of a woman to conceive even after one year constant trying to become pregnant. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 6.1 million women (10 percent) in U.S experience trouble in getting pregnant or maintain the pregnancy.
Nearly one percent of annual live births in the U.S belong to IVF treatment.
