27-02-2012 14:16 There may be new hope for those trying to overcome infertility. Convential wisdom from the past fifty or so years holds that women are born with a finite number of egg cells for reproduction. But a newly released report suggests that rare stem cells discovered in the ovaries of young women may be key to producing new eggs. Jonathan Tilly of Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, led a team that used a protein to gather stem cells from healthy human ovaries donated by young Japanese women. The researchers then injected those stem cells into pieces of human ovary, and new egg cells formed within two weeks. While there's no guarantee the cells will mature into usable, quality eggs, the findings could lead to better treatments for women left infertile because of disease or age. According to Tilly, "Our current views of ovarian aging are incomplete. There's much more to the story than simply the trickling away of a fixed pool of eggs."
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: Stem Cells May Offer Fertility Hope by Helping Generate New Eggs - Video