Artificial ovaries for no more menopause!!!
During menopause a woman’s ovaries stop working—leading to hot flashes, sleep problems, obesity, and worse, osteoporosis. Now scientists are exploring whether transplanting lab-made ovaries might stop those symptoms. Researchers used tissue engineering to construct artificial rat ovaries able to supply female hormones like estrogen and progesterone. Women going through menopause, as well as those who have undergone cancer treatment with chemotherapy or had their ovaries removed for medical purposes, lose the ability to produce estrogen and progesterone. Lower levels of these hormones can affect a number of different body functions. To counteract unpleasant symptoms, many women turn to hormone replacement therapy—synthetic estrogen and progestin, which carries an increased risk of heart disease and breast cancer, so it’s not recommended for long-term use. Artificial ovaries could be a safer and effective alternative to the synthetic hormones millions of women take after reaching middle age. When tested in rats, the pieces of tissue, known as organoids, were better than traditional hormone replacement drugs at improving bone health, preventing weight gain, and having minimal to no bone density loss with the same uterine health. Clinical trials of artificial ovaries are not likely to happen soon. For one thing, it is uncertain where the cells needed to build the organoids would come from. Younger women might need to donate the tissue. To engineer the organoids, scientists combined two cell types—granulosa and theca cells. They collected samples of these cells from female rats that had their ovaries removed and grew them in the lab so they eventually formed three-dimensional tissue. Within a week of implantation, the artificial ovaries started secreting estrogen, progesterone, and two other natural hormones not found in current hormone replacement drugs.
