Boffinesses have created tiny testicles in a lab – sparking fears it could make men redundant in the future.
Dr Nitzan Gonen, an Israeli scientist, has produced the genitals from cells extracted from mice. But she has said she hopes to be able to produce human versions within five years that could produce sperm.
Dr Gonen, who heads the Sex Determination Laboratory at Bar-Ilan in Israel, said her goal is not to make men redundant in terms of reproduction and just wants to help the global crisis in male fertility.
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Dr Gonen, said: “People always ask me if the aim of my work is one day to get rid of men.
(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“No, definitely not, We need their chromosomes — we have to stick with them.”
The mum of four said her work will help those men who can’t produce sperm and can’t father a child, rather than being used as a way to make babies without a man.
Dr Gonen used five-day-old mice to produce a testicle organoid – a microscopic version of an organ.
They added hormones and growth medium to try replicate a testes environment and were speechless with the results.
In the future, Dr Gonen plans to produce organoids using human samples.
Her vision is to grow testes organoids from biopsies of children with cancer and hopefully grow fertile sperm in vitro.
(Image: Getty Images)
Within five years, Dr Gonen hopes she will have perfected the technique, enabling her to grow miniature testicles from a minuscule patch of skin taken from an infertile man.
It comes after warnings that the entire human race could be in danger if the quality of men’s semen is not improved.
Christopher Barratt, a professor of reproductive medicine at Dundee University and a member of the World Health Organisation’s board for semen analysis, said: “Male fertility is in crisis, and unless we do something about it the human race is going to be in a total mess.”
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Studies have found that between 1973 and 2018 sperm concentration fell by 1.2 per cent a year and after 2000, by an alarming 2.6% a year.
He added: “Not only is the sperm count dropping – that is, the total number of sperm per ejaculate – but so too is the sperm concentration, or the number of sperm per millilitre and the quality of sperm [ie factors such as how well they move,’
“We used to say that in 99 per cent of cases, if a couple were struggling to conceive, then it was usually due to a problem with the woman; but now we say that it’s as likely to be due to the man.”
Professor Barratt says around 7 per cent of men in the UK have fertility problems, although that looks certain to rise.
He added: “Male fertility is totally underappreciated and under-researched, and there is a genuine cause for concern.”