A team of Chinese researchers
reports turning a dish of a certain type of mouse stem cell into spermlike cells, which then were used to fertilize eggs and produce healthy mouse pups. The approach could help researchers study mammalian sperm development more directly, and it could spur efforts to develop treatments for male infertility in people.
“It is, I think, truly the first time any lab has been able to go all the way up to a live pup in vitro,” says Niels Geijsen, a stem cell biologist at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, the Netherlands, “which is quite amazing, if this is indeed what happened.” The dramatic result—from a relatively straightforward approach—comes after years of unsuccessful or incomplete attempts, and it leaves some researchers wary about whether it can be replicated.
If it can, the technique offers researchers their first full glimpse of mammalian meiosis, the process by which cells in the testes and ovaries become sperm and eggs. And if a similar technique could produce human sperm cells, “the impact would be huge,” says Kyle Orwig, a stem cell biologist focused on male infertility treatments at the Magee-Womens Research Institute at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
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