National Antivisection Society
Research projects 2002 - Infertility
In vitro study of apoptosis in male sperm cells
Drs Christopher Barratt and Ian Brewis, from the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Women’s Hospital, are establishing and characterising a human in vitro cell culture for the study of infertility caused by sperm dysfunction. Approximately one in six couples in the UK are infertile, and the most common cause is abnormal or insufficient numbers of spermatozoa. Many animals are used in infertility research.
It is generally believed that more than half of the cells from which sperm cells are derived, die before maturity. The cell death occurs most probably by a process known as apoptosis, or programmed cell death, where the cell breaks down into fragments. Apoptosis is a protective mechanism to remove excessive or genetically damaged cells. An imbalance in the process may lead to quantitative and/or qualitative anomalies in sperm output.
The mechanisms of apoptosis in sperm cells are largely unknown, and the limited knowledge available is based almost exclusively on rodent models, which is not applicable to humans due to several differences in development of sperm cells between species.
The project supported by the Lord Dowding Fund is creating an in vitro culture system of human seminiferous tubes (the coiled tubes of the testis, where male germ cells are formed), allowing the mechanisms involved in human sperm cell apoptosis to be examined. Initially, tissue is collected from biopsies of the testicles of men attending the Infertility Clinic at the Birmingham Women’s Hospital, and also from men undergoing orchidectomy (removal of one or both testicles) for prostate or testicular cancer. From these biopsies segments of seminiferous tubules are isolated and cultured to set up the in vitro model.
Please help us end the abuse of animals, please make a donation today…
action alerts