An experiment that has produced human eggs from stem cells could be a boon for women desperate to have a baby, scientists claim.
New research has swept away the belief women only have a limited stock of eggs and replaces it with the theory the supply is continuously replenished from precursor cells in the ovary.
'The prevailing dogma in our field for the better part of the last 50 or 60 years was that young girls at birth were given a bank account of eggs at birth that's not renewable,' says Jonathan Tilly, director of the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the research.
'As they become mature and become a woman, they use those eggs up (and) the ovaries will fail when they enter menopause.'
Tilly first challenged the 'bank account' doctrine eight years ago, suggesting female mammals continue producing egg-making cells into adulthood rather than from a stock acquired at birth.
His theory ran into a firestorm.
Other scientists challenged the accuracy of his experiments or dismissed their conclusions as worthless, given they were only conducted on lab mice.
But Tilly says the new work not only confirms his controversial idea, it takes it further.
In it, his team isolated egg-producing stem cells in human ovaries and then coaxed them into developing oocytes, as eggs are called.
Building on a feat by Chinese scientists, they pinpointed the oocyte stem cells by using antibodies which latched onto a protein 'handle' located on the side of these cells.
Read more from the original source:
Human eggs produced from stem cells