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Singapore scientists achieve test-tube sperm breakthrough

Researchers in Singapore are the first to grow mature male fish sperm in the laboratory in a breakthrough that could lead to treating infertility in men, the scientists said yesterday.

The feat by a National Uni-versity of Singapore team might also be used in agriculture to allow males with desired traits to have their sperm produced in bulk for insemination or to introduce new traits via the sperm to future generations of offspring.

"Because of the similarities between fish and mammals, the findings point to the ability to replicate the work in mammals and obtain sperm under these conditions to treat male infertility," Associate Professor Hong Yunhan, who led the work, told The Straits Times.

The team from the university's biology department focused on making sperm using a common freshwater fish, the medaka.

The 4cm-long fish shares many key features with mammals in how it produces sperm, Hong said.

The scientists succeeded in keeping a colony of sperm stem cells growing in the laboratory for two years and coaxing these cells to change into complete swimming sperm that could fertilize eggs without human help.

Attempts elsewhere to produce normal sperm outside the body from stem cells have failed in other animals, Hong said.

Scientists have long tried to keep mouse spermatagonia, or unprogrammed cells, alive for the long term in a test tube but failed.

US scientists managed last year to get stem cells from mice to change into immature sperm that could fertilize eggs, but they had to be manually injected.

The next step will be to try to duplicate the work on mammals such as mice, Hong said.

The latest advance does not mean that men will become unnecessary to make babies, Hong stressed.

"I am a man, and I don't want to imply that men are useless," he was quoted as saying.
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