A Japanese scientist said he created eggs from male skin and had surrogate mothers carry healthy puppies.
Scientists at a Japanese laboratory have produced healthy offspring from two male parents by using a gene-editing technique to create viable egg cells from the skin, a stem cell researcher has said.
The progress was reported on Wednesday by Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi from Osaka University during the International Human Genome Editing Summit in London. Hayashi has been working on various techniques to make eggs from stem cells for a decade. His latest paper on the subject is awaiting publication in the journal Nature, he told the BBC.
Artificial gametogenesis – or in-laboratory production of sex cells – has been done on mice, the scientist said in London during an update of core technologies in the field of genome editing. It involves reprogramming a skin cell into a pluripotent stem cell – a type of cell that can transform into other types of cells later.
Scientists removed the Y chromosome from the stem cells and created copies of the X chromosome to replace it. With a complete XX set, the cells became eggs, although only a small percentage of the source material could be made to undergo the entire process.
The result was of relatively poor quality, with only seven puppies emerging from 630 attempts to implant fertilized embryos into surrogate mothers, Hayashi explained during the event. But those seven “Looked good,” he added, meaning that they developed normally and had an offspring.
In 2018, Chinese scientists reported breeding mice from same-sex parents, but in their experiment, the pups turned out to be unhealthy and didn’t live long.
Hayashi warned that the method devised by his laboratory is very far from maturity, and it may take a decade before it can be used for the treatment of human fertility.
The method, however, gives hope to same-sex couples who could have children who are genetically related to them, although this type of reproduction should first be accepted by society, argued the scientist. If it happens, he favors such use, he told the BBC.
He added that technically it might be possible for a man to conceive a child with an artificial egg made from a somatic cell and sperm, but it is “I’m not sure if at this stage it’s safe or acceptable for society.”
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