Scientists have successfully grown human eggs to the full maturity in a lab for the first time. Yes, you read that correctly. According to data released by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, their research has “demonstrated that under certain conditions, it is possible to achieve accelerated oocyte/follicle development from human primordial/primary follicles,” or that growing a human egg, outside of the body, from immature egg cells is very possible. This had never been documented previously.
For this study, tissue from a specific part of human ovaries was obtained from six women. These women ranged from ages twenty-six to forty. Women are born with immature egg cells. These cells do not fully mature until after puberty. According to Professor Adam Balen, Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Leeds Centre for Reproductive Medicine, “The application of this technology in the future would be for women and potentially also young girls, who require fertility preservation by the freezing of ovarian tissue and for whom it may not be feasible or appropriate to re-implant the ovarian tissue at a later date.”
This discovery is a big deal, as it has demonstrated something that was not proven before this study. However, research on this discovery is very far from over, it has really just begun. According to the Director of Germline and Epigenomics Research at The University of Cambridge, “The results reported in the study are interesting but much additional work is needed before concluding that they have the potential to be used in clinics.”
After these scientific findings, we do know that growing a human egg to its full state of maturity is possible, however, it is not yet been proven to be safe. It can be assumed that many more studies will be done in regards to this, but for now, all humans will come from an egg grown to maturity inside of the human body.
