Yet another Israeli breakthrough in reproductive health: Arab-Israeli researcher Prof. Mahmoud Huleihel from Israel's Ben-Gurion University has pioneered an artificial testis, the sperm-producing "factory" of a male testicle. This advance offers new hope that infertile men could father their own children one day. It is also good news for boys who are undergoing chemotherapy.

 

Huleihel has pioneered this artificial testis in a Petri dish. Using a special chemical mix and a physical matrix, Huleihel's team is able to take cells of unripe sperm and turn them into viable sperm. While the experiments were done on mice, in theory he hopes to make the procedure available to humans.

 

In scientific terms, the process involves the generation of spermatozoa from mouse testicular germ cells under in-vitro culture, as described recently in the Asian Journal of Andrology. This is the first time scientists anywhere have succeeded in growing live sperm from a germ cell in a test tube, says Huleihel.

 

"It is not the first experiment to grow sperm in culture," he explains. "There was another research team that managed to produce an ‘organ culture' from testicular tissue about six months ago." However, this approach has a serious drawback in that it requires testicle tubules, basically parts of the existing testes.

 

 

The research paves the way for new experiments, now underway, on human sperm germ cells. The researchers are using donations from infertile male clients of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics.

They are also working with biopsy material from a pre-pubescent boy who underwent aggressive chemotherapy treatments, under the assumption that the cancer treatments could wipe out his chances of having children in the future. Mature sperm are typically not produced until a boy reaches puberty, but with this technique, Huleihel hopes to develop a straightforward way to culture sperm from the unripe sperm cells for children undergoing cancer treatments. "We've already got material from one testicle biopsy - some [cells] from this child - and have stored part of it for future use for preserving his fertility. And in another stage we have taken [cells] to the lab and are culturing these cells to reach the same effects as in the mouse."

 

Of course, medical research is never a surefire guarantee of a commercial application, but the hope is that in five or 10 years, this new technique could benefit men being treated at infertility clinics around the world.

 

The university is currently looking into ways to commercialize the research. "We are working hard to reach this point," says Huleihel, who pioneered the three-dimensional agar culture system called SACS.

 

 

Male infertility is a growing concern in the modern and developed world, especially when not a single viable sperm is available to fertilize a partner's egg in IVF procedures. Israel is a world leader in IVF, which is offered free under national health insurance plans for up to two pregnancies. In men who have no ability to produce sperm whatsoever, or in pre-pubescent boys, there hasn't been much hope until now for creating maturated sperm. Sperm banks can solve the problem of infertility in some couples, but men who want to sire their own children have no real options.

 

This new research joins a trend in Israel: A few years ago, Israeli researchers managed to produce viable and unripe oocytes from pre-pubescent girls who were undergoing aggressive radiation treatments so they could have kids of their own in the future.

 

Led by Prof. Dror Meirov from Tel Aviv University, Huleihel says he is also collaborating with this team, even though their approaches are very different. But this new advance in sperm shows how Israel is clearly leading the way in advancing fertility research for humankind. "This study may open new therapeutic strategies for infertile men who cannot generate sperm and/or prepubertal cancer patients at risk of infertility due to aggressive chemo- or radiotherapy, and cannot cryopreserve sperm as in adult patients," Huleihel concludes.

 

The study was done in cooperation with Prof. Eitan Lunenfeld, Soroka University Medical Center, Beersheva, and Prof. Stefan Schlatt, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.