Researchers Create Embryonic-Like Stem Cells From Human Testes

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Now Skutella and his team have demonstrated similar results while avoiding genetic manipulations altogether; instead, the reprogramming is induced by changing the cells' growth conditions.

What these authors accomplished, said Hasenfuss, was "to get a pluripotent cell out of the spermatogonial [sperm] stem cells without the need of gene transfer requiring viruses."

Skutella and his colleagues aren't the first to reprogram testicular cells; others have already done so in mice. But his team was the first to successfully do so in humans, said Dirk de Rooij, emeritus professor of endocrinology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who recently wrote a review on reprogramming mouse spermatogonial stem cells.

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De Rooij called the new study "a breakthrough."

"In comparison to the mouse studies that have been done, there is a big leap forward in efficiency with which these people get these germline stem cells," he said.

But besides the obvious fact that women can't benefit from this development, Donovan, who called the study "an exciting piece of work," raised one additional question that may limit the technique's adoption: "I suspect people would be much more willing to give up a piece of skin to make an iPS cell than to have a testicular biopsy to give rise to an adult germline stem cell," he said.

More information

For more on stem cells, visit the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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