Report: Women have rare egg-producing stem cells
For 60 years, doctors have believed women were born with all the eggs they’ll ever have. Now Harvard scientists are challenging that dogma, saying they’ve discovered the ovaries of young women harbor very rare stem cells capable of producing new eggs.
If Sunday’s report is confirmed, harnessing those stem cells might one day lead to better treatments for women left infertile because of disease - or simply because they’re getting older.
“Our current views of ovarian aging are incomplete. There’s much more to the story than simply the trickling away of a fixed pool of eggs,” said lead researcher Jonathan Tilly of Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital, who has long hunted these cells in a series of controversial studies.
Tilly’s previous work drew fierce skepticism, and independent experts urged caution about the latest findings.