Saturday October 11, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- German researchers found that cells taken from men's testicles could be used to grow certain types of adult cells or tissues, making it possible for scientists to sidestep the controversy over use of human embryonic stem cell research.

In the Oct. 8 early online edition of the journal Nature, Thomas Skutella, professor at the Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine in Tuebingen in Germany and colleagues reported that they succeeded in isolating and growing the testicular cells into specific adult cells.

Early studies have shown that spermatogonial cells from the testes of mice behaved like embryonic stem cells and could be tricked to grow into certain types of adult cells.  The current study is the first of its kind to show that men also have the same stuff like mice have to offer.

The cells used in the study were taken from biopsied tissue from 22 men ages from 17 to 81. The researchers found it took only a few weeks for the cells to differentiate into various types of cells.

Skutella and colleagues could only turn the germline cells into a number of adult cells, but not other types. And also the cells used were taken from whole testes although the researchers said part of a testis may also be functional.

"It's exciting. We could do it for males; that leaves women without as easy a method," stem cell scientist George Daley of Children's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute was quoted by theAssociatePress as saying.

Early, Japanese scientists have found that skin cells may act like embryonic stem cells and be use to growing certain types of adult cells. But the method involves use of a virus that may integrate itself into the DNA in the cells resulting in cancer-causing mutation.

Skutella’s method can not only solve this problem, but also have another advantage over the method based on skill cells. That is, the spermatogonial cells can be taken from a patient and growed into adult cells or tissue and then transplanted in the same patient without fearing the body rejecting the transplanted tissue.

Skutella was cited y news media as saying that women's egg cells may also function like cells from male testicles in terms to be used to grow cells.

For more information about the study, read Generation of pluripotent stem cells from adult human testis. by the researchers.