Many women struggle to get pregnant because the number of eggs they have and the eggs' quality drops as women get older. But now Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center are experimenting with a process that can create new eggs from ovarian cells.
"We're just taking cells and then we're able to grow those cells outside the body. We're able to form the eggs again," said Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
Scientists hope these early stage eggs could one day be fertilized.
"The hope is to place those eggs back into the same patient so that there will be no rejection to the patient's own egg," Atala said.
So far, doctors have only tested the process on rats. But the ultimate goal is to use it with people, so women can have another source of eggs which are their own.
"It would give a huge boost to these patients for fertility options. Right now the most important thing for women to realize is that we don't have these options available yet," said Dr. James Goldfarb, the medical director at University Hospital's Fertility Center.
And researchers at Wake Forest agree it will be quite some time before they try to create eggs from women's cells.
The Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest is currently working to grow more than 30 different organs and tissues in their laboratory.
PO Box 4508