Robin Lovell-Badge
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
It's not possible to do it from a woman because you cannot make sperm without having cells which originally had a Y chromosome. So that would be very technically challenging. And then there are other issues which are contentious, but maybe slightly less dangerous. So that one is really dangerous, is where you have...
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
multiple parents or you could have multiple generations occurring in the lab before you then find out what an embryo would look like.
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
The idea is that they're reprogrammed back to an early embryonic state to give so-called induced pluripotent stem cells. These correspond in many ways to cells in the very early embryo, and we know that they can give rise to any cell type in the human body, including germ cells.
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
One of the main drivers is to deal with, for example, children who've had cancers and therefore they've had radiotherapy or chemotherapy, which has left them infertile. And it's very difficult with a child to take ovarian or testicular tissue and then preserve their fertility that way in a freezer, if you like.
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
If you could take a skin biopsy or blood cells or whatever and reprogram those into these induced perioperative stem cells, then we know in the mouse, at least, you can coax these cells to specialise to give you the germ cells, which are the cell type that will ultimately give rise to sperm or eggs. The techniques aren't quite there yet, but it's going to happen. You would be not limited by age.
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
Someone could have left cells behind and died. As long as you have a tissue sample, you could make, in theory, you could make sperm or eggs from those cells.
Global News Podcast
Jordanian helicopters begin flying in aid to Gaza
One is, I think it was referred to as solo parenting. I don't really like that phrase because there are other ways of solo parenting, but where you take cells and reprogram them back and then get, in theory, you could get sperm and eggs from a man. That's basically been done in mice. And so you would have one individual having their own child.