Scientists Close In on ‘Lab-Grown Sperm’ as Male Fertility Crisis Deepens

Scientists have taken a major step toward producing artificial human sperm in a laboratory as collapsing male fertility rates fuel fears that natural reproduction could eventually become impossible.

The breakthrough involved creating early-stage reproductive cells from human and monkey stem cells before growing them inside laboratory-made structures designed to imitate natural testes.

The study, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, marks an early but significant advance toward the creation of fully developed lab-grown sperm.

Researchers Build Artificial ‘Mini-Testis’

Scientists began with induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPSCs, taken from humans and rhesus macaques.

These blank-slate cells can be programmed to develop into almost any type of cell in the body.

Researchers exposed the cells to chemical signals that transformed them into primordial germ cell-like cells, which resemble the earliest embryonic cells that eventually develop into sperm.

Science website MedicalXpress explained how researchers then attempted to recreate the biological environment needed for those cells to mature.

“The researchers started with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from humans and rhesus macaques, which are blank-slate cells that can be programmed to become almost any cell type,” the report notes.

“By exposing them to specific chemical signals, the researchers transformed them into primordial germ cell-like cells (PGCLCs), which are lab-grown versions of the earliest embryonic cells that eventually develop into germline cells, in this case sperm cells.

“Germ cells cannot mature on their own and require a supportive environment, or niche.

“To provide this, the researchers combined the human or monkey germ cells with supportive cells from mouse fetuses.

“Together, these cells self-organized into a three-dimensional structure called a xenogeneic reconstituted testis (xrTestis), which mimics the basic structure of a natural testis.

“Inside the mini-testis, seminiferous tubules began to form,” the report explains.

“These are coiled structures within the testes where sperm are made.

“What grew in this setup closely resembled both the appearance and gene activity patterns of real human germ cells during the early stages of sperm development.”

The cells did not become fully mature sperm, but the experiment demonstrated that scientists could reproduce crucial early stages of sperm development outside the human body.

Male Fertility Rates Continue to Collapse

The announcement comes amid growing alarm over declining sperm counts and other measures of male fertility around the world.

Professor Shanna Swan has warned that current global trends could leave the median man with a sperm count of zero by the middle of the century.

Under that scenario, half of all men would produce no sperm, while many of the remainder would produce so little that they would be functionally infertile.

Such a collapse, described as “spermageddon,” could make natural human reproduction impossible within a generation.

Swan has linked the decline to several factors, including obesity, sedentary lifestyles, and increasing exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals.

Those chemicals can interfere with the body’s natural hormonal systems and have become widespread in modern consumer products and the environment.

Artificial Reproduction Moves Closer

The new research remains at an early stage, and scientists have not yet produced fully functional human sperm using the process.

However, the successful creation of early germ cells inside a laboratory-grown testicular structure brings researchers closer to developing an artificial alternative to natural sperm production.

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The technology could eventually be used to treat male infertility.

However, it also raises profound ethical and societal questions as scientists gain increasing control over the biological processes behind human reproduction.

As male fertility continues to decline, the prospect of laboratory-produced sperm is moving from science fiction toward a potential medical reality.

Source: https://slaynews.com/scientists-lab-grown-sperm-male-fertility-crisis-deepens/

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