Spermatogony "in vitro"
Stem cells adapted for the treatment of male infertility
Scientists from the USA have figured out how to grow a large number of "blanks" of male genital bodies from stem cells. Due to this, they can be used to treat infertility. The description of the study was published by the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Tan et al., Transcriptome profiling reveals signaling conditions dictating human spermatogonia fate in vitro).
"Now we are able to maintain the vital activity of these cells for two to four weeks. The next task is to understand how to make them multiply and live longer, what is needed in order to put them into practice," said Miles Wilkinson, one of the authors of the work, professor at the University of California at San Diego (USA).
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 10% of couples in developed and developing countries cannot have children due to disorders in the reproductive system. As the observations of doctors show, among men and women, the proportion of infertile is approximately equal, and most of them lose the ability to conceive a child at the age of 40-55 years.
The mechanisms of infertility development in most cases remain unknown due to the complexity and little-studied genetic factors that control the production of eggs and sperm, as well as the first phases of embryo development. Now scientists are trying to figure out these mechanisms, trying to turn stem cells into analogues of germ cells and various forms of embryos.
On the way to infertility treatment
Wilkinson and his colleagues solved one of these problems. They learned how to grow so-called A–type spermatogonia - one of the types of stem cells that live in the male sex glands. They constantly multiply and serve as a kind of reservoir from which the stocks of spermatocytes are constantly replenished – "blanks" of future spermatozoa.
As animal experiments show, with the help of transplantation of these cells, it is possible to get rid of many forms of infertility. The problem, however, was that scientists did not know how to distinguish these corpuscles from other types of cells living in the testes, as well as to grow them artificially using reprogrammed stem cells.
Recently, as Wilkinson notes, his team solved this problem. Scientists have developed a technique by which it is possible to determine the type of each individual cell, based on unique sets of RNA, characteristic only for them. Using this technique, the scientists tried to isolate a pure culture of A-type spermatogonia and understand which genes were active inside them.
After analyzing three dozen samples of similar cells obtained from healthy donors, scientists came to the conclusion that the main "brake" of their growth is the chain of AKT genes, which causes some of these stem cells to turn into sperm blanks.
By blocking her work, Wilkinson and his colleagues were able to grow large numbers of A-type spermatogonia and maintain their existence for several weeks. Further experiments with these cells, scientists hope, will pave the way for the creation of the first effective technique for the use of stem cells for the treatment of male infertility.
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