Biologists in George Church’s lab are one step closer to a technique that could allow scientists to make eggs or sperm from adult stem cells on demand. The controversial approach, called in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, has been pursued by a small number of research groups. If successful, it could rewrite the rules of assisted reproduction, Ryan Cross wrote in this feature story.
The new research showed how the scientists could coax adult stem cells into meiosis, a special form of cell division that germline stem cells use to create eggs and sperm. The team didn’t create any eggs or sperm, as they only got the cells to go about two-thirds of the way through the process.
But Merrick Pierson Smela, who led the project as a grad student in Church’s lab, is determined to see the work through. He co-founded Ovelle Bio with CEO Travis Potter to finish solving IVG. The Boston-based company opened labs in February and has raised $2.1 million. The biotech hopes to create the first viable egg in 2027.
Even with that ambitious timeline, there would still be a long road ahead to produce healthy embryos.
“Since any little error in making an egg is a generational error, I’m always skeptical about how fast we can get there, especially with the regulatory side and ethical side,” said Kutluk Oktay, director of the Laboratory of Fertility Preservation and Molecular Reproduction at Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved in the Church lab’s research.
Potter said that Ovelle will talk with regulators and conduct much more research, including in monkeys, before they reach human testing.
“If we get an egg, we will want to make sure that it is a healthy egg by carefully studying it to make sure that it was the same as eggs retrieved the old-fashioned way for IVF,” he said.
