Infertility is the inability to conceive despite regular and unprotected sexual intercourse for a year. Today, a variety of methods continue to be developed for infertility problems. One of the most promising of these is stem cell therapy.
Stem cell therapy and female infertility
Research has shown that stem cell therapy can delay menopause. In addition, stem cell therapy can increase the ability of the ovaries to produce eggs.
As a result of experiments conducted on mice, it was reported that infertile mice that received stem cell transplants produced eggs and gave birth again.
This is considered a very important development. The development of the egg cell is better understood with stem cell transplantation and it is thought that it will be a big step for infertility problems in the future. Many researches and experiments are needed to perform this experiment on humans yet. However, it is thought that a big development will be made in female infertility in a short time.
The traditional view until now was that female mammals and humans were born
Stem cell therapy and male infertility
In cases of azoospermia, that is, no sperm in the semen, sperm can be obtained from the testicles with a method called micro TESE and children can be conceived with the microinjection method. However, this method is only successful for men who have sperm in their testicles.
Studies have shown that stem cells that can be used from bone marrow in treatments for male infertility can achieve promising and successful results.
Stem cells are cell tubes that form the source of mature cells in all organs and tissues and can differentiate into another cell type and have the ability to renew themselves. There are also stem cells called spermatogonia in the testicles, which are the most primitive cells of the spermatogenic series. The cause of azoospermia in male candidates with azoospermia is due to a production disorder. For this reason, there are no cells of the spermatogenic series, including stem cells, in the testicles. In a very specific situation called maturation arrest, spermatogenic series cells do not continue their maturation after reaching a certain stage. For this reason, they cannot turn into mature sperm cells. In these pauses in the spermatid stage, it has been tried to mature these cells outside the body, in a laboratory environment, or to apply them directly for microinjection. A small number of pregnancy rates have been reported from these trials. However, there is still debate about the source of these pregnancies.
For this reason, spermatids are no longer used as fertilization cells.
In stem cell transplantation experiments conducted on mice, pregnancy was achieved by transferring stem cells obtained from a donor into the testicle. In experiments conducted on mice, the development of the offspring in pregnancies achieved with donor stem cells was not found to be normal. In addition, it has been reported that embryos obtained after testicular stem cell transplantation (TSCT) contain fewer cells when they reach the blastocyst stage. Studies on this subject are ongoing.
In azoospermic men, in whom sperm cannot be detected in TESE, there are not even stem cells. For this reason, their own stem cell transplantation is not possible. However, serious studies are being conducted on the transfer of stem cells obtained from donors into the testicles.
These studies and researches constitute the basic building blocks for the future. Thanks to these studies, the hormones and other factors needed for the completion of sperm production can be determined. It is not important that these studies do not achieve significant success at the moment. It is thought that they can lead to serious developments for the future.
Comments