| Human Eggs from Stem Cells, A Possibility |
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Treatments for Infertility based on artificial sperms and eggs produced from human embryonic stem cells would be possible as soon as 10 years from now.
Scientists in Britain have used embryonic stem cells to grow primordial germ cells which later develop into either sperms or eggs. The next step will be to generate sperm from the stem cells.
If human eggs could be created from embryonic stem cells, it would also circumvent the need for donated eggs for therapeutic cloning.
"One of the barriers to developing therapeutic cloning is that eggs have to be donated by women for this process. If we could use embryonic stem cells to create more eggs, we could use them for therapeutic cloning," Professor Harry Moore, a reproductive biologist said.
“One of the reasons for doing this research is that it may allow us to investigate the very earliest processes of how a human gamete and gonad (ovary and testis) develops. Many scientists believe that environmental chemical pollutants that mimic the action of hormones (so called endocrine disrupting chemicals) might interfere with human development at this stage and cause congenital abnormalities, infertility and possibly cancer (in particular testicular cancer). By developing suitable tests with embryonic stem cells as they differentiate to germ cells we can investigate the action of these chemicals in the laboratory" he said while speaking at a conference.
"It opens new and challenging possibilities: because the technique can be used to generate eggs from a man’s (adult) cells, gay couples could have children genetically related to both," said Anna Smajdor, a medical ethicist at Imperial College in London.
"Single men could even produce a child using their own sperm and an engineered egg, opening the way to a new form of cloning. Women’s fertility would no longer need to be curtailed at the menopause," she said. "These possibilities raise new questions about how we define parenthood and about how we decide who has access to these new technologies.
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