Human Sperm Created From Bone Marrow Stem Cells

NewScientist.com reports researchers have turned human bone marrow stem cells into primitive sperm cells. If they are able to someday fully develop these cells, infertile men could produce their own offspring, and in a stranger twist: women could theoretically produce their own sperm.

This research is the outgrowth of stem cell research performed on mice by Dr Karim Nayernia, where the live births of mice were the result of in vitro fertilization from artificial sperm produced from the embryonic stem cells of mice in 2006. Nayernia claims that researchers are still 3-5 years away from being able to produce fully functional human sperm in the laboratory.