Early life stages and postnatal (dys)function in vertebrates.

Unfortunately, infertility problems around the world are alarmingly high. Several options are clinically available to women who are willing to preserve their fertility. Those techniques each have their own strengths and weaknesses. The fact that some patients can still not be helped by the currently available techniques requires research in new innovative areas that might provide solutions to all infertile animals or humans. The most promising approach to obtain oocytes without the need for the presence of own oocytes, is the creation of so called 'artificial' or in vitro created gametes from embryonic stem cells, from endogenous cells within the ovary or from induced pluripotent stem cells. Endogenous stem cells have been isolated from ovaries and their ability to differentiate into oocytes in vitro could be demonstrated for mice, but also for larger domestic animals such as sheep and juvenile pigs. Those cells will allow to create very substantial therapeutic applications by potentially allowing the formation of new oocytes. Going even a step further, there is the future perspective of using somatic cells such as skin biopsies to create induced pluripotent stem cells and turning those stem cells into germ cells such as oocytes and sperm cells. This would serve the extremely severe cases of infertility in which no patient-specific ovaries, follicles or oocytes are available. These techniques would not only give perspective to human fertility preservation, but could also lead to a breakthrough in conservation of endangered species. Considering porcine models are recognized worldwide as excellent models for human diseases and in vitro embryo production research, we will use the pig as a model to develop the stem cell techniques.

Keywords:HUMAN, REPRODUCTION, WILDLIFE, STEM CELLS

Disciplines:Reproductive medicine, Veterinary reproduction and obstetrics, Zoological medicine