Artificial sperm plan to avoid human cloning
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 12/11/2001)

INFERTILE men will soon be able to become fathers by producing
artificial sperm, if a project under way at a London clinic proves
successful.
The technique involves cell extraction and would mark a new development
in reproductive science.

A team at the Assisted Reproduction and Gynaecology Centre is
investigating how to take a body cell and remove one set of chromosomes
to create the artificial sperm, which can then be used to fertilise an
egg by conventional IVF methods.

There is no need to produce artificial semen to make the technique work.
The development of artificial sperm would do away with one claimed
justification for human cloning, which most experts agree carries far
too much risk to be tried on patients.

Dr Severino Antinori, the controversial Italian fertility doctor, has
said that he wants to carry out research in Britain in his efforts to
clone children from men unable to father them naturally.

While a cloned offspring would be genetically identical to the father,
the artificial sperm technique would allow the creation of offspring who
are a natural mix of genes from mother and father, even when the man has
no sperm or even sperm-making cells.

Mohamed Taranissi, medical director of the centre, said: "The project is
at the research stage at the moment and we are working on it to get it
right. The indications are quite promising."

He is working with a team at the Reproductive Genetic Institute in
Chicago, led by Dr Yury Verlinsky. The Chicago team visited London this
month to discuss an experimental programme to develop the technology.

Mr Taranissi said: "If it does work then it would be a far better
solution than the alternatives." However, he stressed: "It will be at
least a year or two before we will be ready to consider using it."

Unlike normal cells, which have two sets of chromosomes, a sperm
contains only one set.
Mr Taranissi said: "For people who have no sperm, you can take a cell,
which contains the full complement of chromosomes, halve the number and
end up with something like a sperm."

In Chicago, experiments are under way with mice and using frozen human
eggs, which have been donated for research. "If this becomes reality
there will be no need for cloning, at least for the treatment of
infertility," said Mr Taranissi.

The research complements efforts to enable infertile women to
"reprogramme" donated eggs with their own genetic recipe, also to help
couples to have babies that are their own genetic offspring.

Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan of Monash University, Melbourne, has already
succeeded in "fertilising" a normal mouse egg by using an artificial
sperm, a cell taken from the body of a male.

The embryos go on to develop relatively normally in the laboratory.

©2004 Telegraph Group Limited

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
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