Human Sperm, Egg Cells Mass-Generated using iPS

[Tom.G]

Kyoto University scientists mass-generate cells for sperm, eggs using human iPS​

The research, published in the online edition of the British science journal Nature on Monday, amplified the number of male and female primitive germ cells over 10 billion times from their initial culture stage.

"(The findings) will expedite the pace of research," said Michinori Saito, a professor at Kyoto University and one of the research team members, noting at the same time that they still need to clear hurdles in several areas to achieve such a goal.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240521/p2g/00m/0sc/001000c

I could not find the Nature research article.
Found it (the article has wrong reference):
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aat1674

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Interesting, but any ethical concerns here?

 

[BillTre]

Interesting, but any ethical concerns here?

To many cell divisions can lead to mutations arising in the cell lines generating the germ cells. This is not very important at this point because they only want to use them for research, not make new people. Making humans would probably require a lot of safe guards about this.

I glanced at the article and it seems to be about making pre-germ cells (not yet eggs or sperm) from iPS (induced Pluripotent Stem cells) cells.
I did not think this was clear in the first post.