Washington: Scientists have grown a human ovary in the laboratory from slivers of ovarian tissue, which has been able to turn an immature human egg into a mature one, a breakthrough they claim may soon offer women cancer patients more chances of conceiving.
To create the artificial ovary, a team at the Women and Infants Hospital in Rhode Island started with theca cells, which form the outer coating of the follicle which holds the egg and produces a precursor to oestrogen.
The scientists got their cells from ovaries that had been removed from young women for other reasons. A gel mould shaped like a honeycomb was seeded with theca cells, which grew into a structure two millimeters wide.
From the fluid surrounding eggs of another set of women undergoing IVF, the team extracted granulosa cells, which produce the hormone oestradiol and help eggs to mature.
They used a mould to form them into spherical clumps, which they placed into cavities in the honeycomb.
Next they took a human egg that was about one week shy of ovulation and placed it into the structure along with follicle-stimulating hormone, which helps egg growth but is not released in the ovaries.
The egg took just 72 hours to develop to the point where it could be fertilised -- at this point it had developed a "polar body", a small structure only produced once an egg is mature, the 'New Scientist' reported.