Around 7.5 percent of men in the U.S. visit a fertility doctor at some point in their life, according to the CDC. Around 18 percent of those men go on to be diagnosed with infertility. As the Guardian reports, across the world, around one percent of men cannot produce any sperm at all. Researchers are hoping to give those men a chance at fathering their own children, however, with a new method that manufactures sperm cells from skin cells.
Although scientists haven’t proved the method is totally viable, the results of a recent study look promising. As the Guardian describes, researchers recruited three infertile men and collected skin cell samples from them. They manipulated those skin cells to become stem cells—generic cells that can grow into any other type of specialized cell in the body. Then, they inserted those human stem cells into the testes of live mice. There, the stem cells formed into immature sperm cells.
Share this article
Read the full, original story: Scientists Transformed Men’s Skin Cells Into Immature Sperm Cells
