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Women with fertility challenges now have hopes of bearing children thanks to scientists who managed to grow human eggs in the laboratory for the first time in history.
The scientists grew the eggs from immature cells taken from human ovarian tissue – a procedure that has only been achieved using mice.
The research done at hospitals in Edinburgh and the Centre for Human Reproduction in New York, paves the way to harvesting thousands of eggs from a tiny piece of ovarian tissue, unlike existing techniques that can give only a small number. Once the eggs mature, they can be used in in vitro fertilisation or frozen for later use.
“If we can show these eggs are normal and can form embryos, then there are many applications for future treatments,” the study’s senior author, Prof Evelyn Telfer said in an interview with The Independent.
She added that if the process of studying the eggs in the lab is successful, it could be beneficial to women who struggle to conceive. She however clarified that while the eggs in the study are at the final stage of maturation, they are not certain it will form a healthy embryo.
The research effort is the culmination of 30 years of international collaboration, which has previously only demonstrated start-to-finish IVM in animals, where ovarian tissue samples are much more plentiful.
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