Lab-grown sperm makes healthy offspring

Sperm have been made in the laboratory and used to father healthy baby mice in a pioneering move that could lead to infertility treatments.

The Chinese research took a stem cell, converted it into primitive sperm and fertilised an egg to produce healthy pups.

The study, in the Journal Cell Stem Cell, showed they were all healthy and grew up to have offspring of their own.

Experts said it was a step towards human therapies.

It could ultimately help boys whose fertility is damaged by cancer treatment, infections such as mumps or those with defects that leave them unable to produce sperm.

Sperm factory

Making sperm in the testes is one of the longest and most complicated processes in the body - taking more than a month from start to finish in most mammals.

Read more: Lab-grown sperm makes healthy offspring

Source: bbc

Obesity, stress and even cellphone use can influence men's ability to conceive

Certain lifestyle factors are linked to higher rates of damage in the genetic material in men’s sperm. This could affect men’s ability to conceive as well as the genes they pass on to their children.

According to researchers, the damage may stem from factors such as obesity, stress and even cellphone use.

Semen analysis usually looks at the numbers and the condition of whole sperm. But the authors of a small study in Poland believe the degree of breakage, or fragmentation, in DNA strands in the sperm might be a better indicator of fertility. DNA carries the cell’s genetic information and hereditary characteristics.

Men with fragmentation have lower odds of conceiving naturally and through such procedures as in vitro fertilization, the scientists write in the International Journal of Impotence Research.

Researchers have noticed before that lifestyle factors can influence the level of sperm DNA fragmentation, said Ricardo P. Bertolla of Sao Paulo Federal University in Brazil, who was not part of the new study.

Read more: Obesity, stress and even cellphone use can influence men's ability to conceive

In a new study, older men and those with higher work stress had more fragmentation of the DNA in
their sperm, which might affect their ability to conceive as well as the genes they pass on to their children.

Source: De Agostini/Getty Images

Sticky beads binding to sperm could offer a novel contraceptive

You ain't going nowhere.

We might have a brand new type of contraceptive on our hands, with scientists inventing sticky beads that can mimic female eggs in the uterus, and act as decoys to lure in sperm, bind to them, and block them from reaching the real thing.

The beads, which have so far only been tested in mice, do their thing thanks to a protein called ZP2, which exists on the zona pellucida – the surface of mammalian eggs. During conception, a sperm cell recognises a molecular fragment of ZP2 and binds to it, enabling the egg to be penetrated and fertilised. By mimicking this process with inert beads coated in the same protein, the sticky beads are effectively a honey pot to trap unwitting sperm.

In the study, a team from the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases embedded the sticky beads into the uterus of female mice.

Read more: Sticky beads binding to sperm could offer a novel contraceptive

Source: ScienceAlert

Key to making reversible, non-hormonal male contraceptives!

At last!

Scientists are getting closer to developing a new kind of reversible male contraceptive that doesn't produce any hormonal side effects.

While a commercial drug could still be some way off, the researchers have managed to isolate a key enzyme found only in sperm. Now that they've identified it and can manufacture this enzyme, the team hopes to target it with a range of drug candidates. With the right drug, it should be possible to decrease sperm motility – their ability to swim – which could prevent sperm from egg fertilisation.

"The milestone reached is the production and isolation of a full-length, active kinase enzyme in sufficient quantities to conduct drug screens," said researcher John Herr from the University of Virginia School of Medicine. "Isolation of an active, full-length form of this enzyme allows us to test drugs that bind to the entire surface of the enzyme so that we can identify inhibitors that may exert a selective action on sperm."

The enzyme in question – called testis-specific serine/threonine kinase 2 (TSSK2) – is unique to the testes, and also appears to only be involved in the final stage of sperm production. That's important, the researchers say, because it makes it more likely that any drug candidate that successfully targets the enzyme won't produce any side effects elsewhere in the body.

Read more: Key to making reversible, non-hormonal male contraceptives!

Source: cloudfront