SOME forms of male infertility might be treated by winding back the developmental clock of the “nurse” cells in the testes that are responsible for surrounding and nurturing undeveloped sperm.
A shortage of healthy is thought to cause between 5 and 15 per cent of infertility cases in men. It was assumed that the number of Sertoli cells a man has is decided during puberty, and that they then no longer divide to produce new cells. Now studies in hamsters and humans suggest these cells can be returned to a state in which they begin dividing again.
The…
