Unlimited human eggs 'potential' for fertility treatment

Researchers have shown it is possible to find stem cells in adult women which spontaneously produced new eggs in the laboratory.
One British expert said the study re-wrote the rule book with "exciting possibilities" for improving fertility.
The long-established theory is that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have. Lead researcher Dr Jonathan Tilly, from Massachusetts General Hospital, said this study, a follow up to one on mice in 2004, disproves that.
His team has reported finding and isolating the stem cells which go on to produce eggs in the ovaries of reproductive age women. It was done by searching for a protein, DDX4, which was unique to the surface of the stem cells. This allowed researchers to fish out the right cells.
When grown in the laboratory, the cells "spontaneously generated" immature eggs - or oocytes, which looked and acted like oocytes in the body.
The cells were "matured" when surrounded by living human ovarian tissue, which had been grafted inside mice.

There are tight legal and ethical restrictions on research on human eggs. The same experiments repeated using stem cells taken from mice showed the eggs could be fertilised with sperm and produced embryos.

Read More/Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17152413