Author/Editor     Bukovsky, Antonin; Copas, Pleas; Virant-Klun, Irma
Title     Potential new strategies for the treatment of ovarian infertility and degenerative diseases with autologous ovarian stem cells
Type     članek
Source     Expert Opin Biol Ther
Vol. and No.     Letnik 6, št. 4
Publication year     2006
Volume     str. 341-65
Language     eng
Abstract     The 50-year-old and currently prevailing view that all oocytes in adult human ovaries persist from the fetal period of life is controversial as it clashes with Darwinian evolutionary theory. Studies of oogenesis and follicular renewal in adult human ovaries, and of the role of hormonal signals and third-party cells (tissue macrophages and T cells), could all be helpful in providing better understanding of the causes of ovarian infertility, its prevention and potential therapy. In addition, the authors recently reported differentiation of distinct cell types and the production of new eggs in cultures derived from premenopausal and postmenopausal human ovaries. It is possible that fertilisation of such eggs will open up new opportunities for providing genetically related children to infertile women for whom conventional in vitro fertilisation has failed. As ovarian stem cells appear to represent a new type of totipotent adult stem cell, they could also be utilised for autologous stem cell therapy of degenerative diseases, without any involvement of allogeneic embryonic stem cells and somatic cell nuclear transfer.
Descriptors     INFERTILITY, FEMALE
OVARIAN FAILURE, PREMATURE
STEM CELLS
OOGENESIS
GERM CELLS
MIDDLE AGE
FOLLICULAR PHASE
FOLLICULAR ATRESIA