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Mouse eggs were produced from skin cells in a dish.

Scientists in Japan have managed to turn mouse skin cells into eggs in a dish and used these eggs to produce healthy pups. This report marks the first complete production of eggs outside of a mouse. If scientists can make this process work for humans, they could produce artificial eggs without the need to implant immature cells into ovaries to complete their development.

Turning Skin Cells into Eggs in a Dish

Katsuhiko Hayashi, a reproductive biologist at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, led the team that announced this breakthrough on October 17 in the journal Nature. In 2012, while at Kyoto University, Hayashi and stem cell scientist Mitinori Saito reported converting skin cells into egg cells: reprogramming them to become embryonic-like stem cells and then into primordial germ cells. However, to make the germ cells form into mature eggs, the researchers had to transfer them to the ovaries of live mice.

From Mice to Humans

Hayashi says the procedure is robust – despite technical challenges – and that different groups in his lab have successfully replicated it. Although the researchers did not need to implant the germ cells in live mice, they did need to add cells taken from the ovaries of other mouse embryos – essentially creating an ovarian-like support system for the eggs to grow in. Hayashi is now trying to prepare a synthetic chemical that could replace these cells in his protocol.

Discussing the Ethics of this Technology

Hayashi believes human “egg-like” cells could be produced within ten years, but he doubts they will be of sufficient quality for fertility treatments. “It is still too early to use synthetic eggs in the clinic,” says Hayashi, warning that his study showed that artificial mouse eggs were often of low quality. He is concerned that such eggs could lead to abnormal embryos and possibly non-viable embryos. In the study, only 3.5% of early embryos generated from synthetic eggs resulted in pups – compared to 60% from eggs that matured inside a mouse.

However, the discussion on the ethics of this technology should start now, according to Azim Surani, a leader in the field at the University of Cambridge in the UK. “This is the right time to engage the wider public in these discussions, before and if the procedures become viable for humans,” he says.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2016.20817


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