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  • Between Bedside and Bench
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Fruitful progress to fertility: Male fertility in the test tube

Nature Medicine volume 17, pages 1564–1565 (2011)Cite this article

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Although prepubertal boys are not producing sperm, they do have spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs) in their testes3,4 that are poised to initiate spermatogenesis at puberty. Several clinics around the world are cryopreserving testicular tissue or cells from prepubertal boys hoping that SSCs in that tissue may be used to generate spermatogenesis, for example by transplanting into the endogenous niches of the seminiferous tubules or autologous grafting of intact seminiferous tubules (Fig. 1). Successes in several animal models5 suggest that these techniques can be translated to the human fertility clinic. Yet, it is important to weigh the risk of the testicular biopsy procedure against the uncertain benefit of experimental therapies. Also, for individuals with blood-borne cancers or cancers that metastasize to the testes, there is a potential risk of reintroducing malignant cells when transplanting testicular tissues or heterogeneous testicular cell suspensions back into them. These concerns about clinical application have fueled the search for in vitro alternatives for generating transplantable germline stem cells (primordial germ cells or SSCs) or fertilization-competent sperm.

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Figure 1: Standard and experimental options for preserving male fertility.

Marina Corral

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Amander T. Clark is in the Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology and at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research, University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.,

    Amander T Clark

  2. Bart T. Phillips and Kyle E. Orwig are in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Magee-Womens Research Institute, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.,

    Bart T Phillips & Kyle E Orwig

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  1. Amander T Clark
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  2. Bart T Phillips
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Correspondence to Kyle E Orwig.

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Clark, A., Phillips, B. & Orwig, K. Fruitful progress to fertility: Male fertility in the test tube. Nat Med 17, 1564–1565 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2594

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