A new development was announced recently in order to ease some of the pain that soldiers are feeling. Those who got damaged and have difficulties in conceiving kids have been given a chance for a first ever batch of lab-grown testicles.
It has been previously reported that over 50,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have been wounded due to explosive devices on the battlefield. And out of that number, 444 people have injuries that are enough to prevent them from having children. Those statistics brought the U.S. military into a decision to help these injured American soldiers to have kids of their own by funding a study that will develop lab-grown testicles.
A team of researchers from the Wake Forest Institute Of Regenerative Medicine has started to construct what could be the world's first ever batch of lab-grown testicles that can one day help injured soldiers have children. According to motherboard's Joseph Jaafari, the researchers from the said institute are now able to develop a pair of testicles just by using a few millimetres of soldiers' damaged cells. However, he also stated that the reconstructed products are so small that they're almost microscopic. However, Mr. Jaafari explained that they still have the ability to produce sperm even if that's the case.
Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and one of the experiment leads, stated that their future goals for the project is to be able to grow the testicular tissue, expand it and return it to the patient's body. However, Dr. Atala also said that they are having a hard time producing normal sized testicles as they require a large amount of blood-vessel supply. As for now, all they can create are smaller samples, but he assured the public that they are working on it to produce bigger products.
