A Way to Make New Eggs in Women?

28 February 2012

A woman holds her stomach at the last stages of her pregnancy.

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

New research could raise hope for women who are having trouble getting pregnant.

For years, the thinking has been that women are born with all the eggs their bodies will ever produce. In fact, this has been the thinking not just about humans but all mammals.

Then, in two thousand four, a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital reported a surprising discovery. Jonathan Tilly found that adult female mice could produce new eggs.

Now, Jonathan Tilly has extended his work and reported another discovery -- this time about human females.

JONATHAN TILLY: "We've isolated, essentially, the female equivalent of the stem cells that we know exist in men that actively make new sperm. So having these cells now isolated, I think, opens up a lot of opportunities to consider that we simply couldn't fathom before."

Stem cells are special kinds of cells. Starting in embryos just a few days old, they produce the many different cell types and tissues that form the body. In some adult tissues, stem cells produce replacements for damaged or worn out cells.

In his new study, Jonathan Tilly and other researchers removed cells from ovaries. Ovaries are the female reproductive organs that produce eggs. The scientists did laboratory tests to make sure they had the right cells that they were looking for. Then they used what are known as culturing methods to grow the cells so they would divide and produce more cells.