Summary
28 February 2012
Doctors in America say it may become possible to create an unlimited supply of human eggs, to help fertility treatment. Researchers found that when they extracted stem cells from the ovaries of women, the cells spontaneously produced new eggs in the laboratory.
Reporter
James Gallagher
Researchers say stem cells in ovaries may one day improve fertility treatment.
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Report
A long-held theory is that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. Researchers say they have shattered that idea by finding the stem cells which produce new eggs.
Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital used unique proteins on the surface of stem cells to fish them out of ovarian tissue.
The study, in Nature Medicine, showed that growing these cells in the laboratory resulted in new eggs being produced spontaneously. Legal and ethical rules limit research on human eggs, but the same techniques repeated on mice showed the eggs could be fertilised and produce embryos.
The findings are a long way from being used in fertility clinics but the researchers said the cells had unprecedented potential to overcome infertility. British experts said the study rewrote the rule book and opened up exciting new possibilities for women.
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Vocabulary
- long-held theory
set of ideas that have been accepted for a long time
- shattered
destroyed or changed
- stem cells
tiny biological structures which can multiply and be used to create specialised tissue for human organs
- to fish them out
to remove from
- spontaneously
naturally without force
- ethical
moral
- fertilised
(eggs) joined with sperm in order to start the process of reproduction
- findings
information discovered as a result of research
- unprecedented
never before happened
- to overcome
to solve a problem that has prevented you from achieving something
