IVG: The Quiet Scientific Revolution That Could Change Everything About Fertility Treatment

Most major shifts in medicine do not arrive with fanfare. They arrive in research papers, conference presentations, and careful laboratory work that takes years to reach the people it could help. In-vitro gametogenesis, known as IVG, feels like one of those shifts.

The premise is remarkable in its simplicity. Take an ordinary adult cell, a skin cell or a blood cell, reprogram it into a stem cell, and then guide it through the biological processes that produce a mature egg or sperm. No surgical retrieval. No hormone stimulation. Just cells, carefully coaxed into becoming something extraordinary.

Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi of the University of Osaka has stated that viable human eggs and sperm created this way could be a reality within ten years. His work and that of colleagues at the University of Kyoto has been among the most cited in this field. California-based Conception Biosciences, with investment from Sam Altman among others, is working toward the same goal from a commercial angle.

The applications that researchers discuss include women who have lost fertility to cancer treatment, patients whose eggs are no longer viable due to age, and same-sex couples who would like a biological connection to their children. Egg freezing in the UK as it currently exists involves significant physical intervention. IVG, if it works, would shift much of that process into the laboratory.

The challenges are equally significant. Producing chromosomally normal human eggs consistently in laboratory conditions has not yet been achieved. In mice it has worked. In humans the science is not there yet, and researchers are clear about how much remains unknown. UK regulations currently do not permit lab-grown gametes in fertility treatment, and the ethical questions around the technology are substantial.

What is important to understand is that IVG changes the origin of reproductive cells. It does not change what happens next. Embryo cryopreservation, cryogenic storage, IVF treatment, vitrification: all of this remains essential regardless of how cells were originally created. The fertility infrastructure built by clinics today is not at risk from IVG. It is, if this science delivers, going to be needed more than ever.

Original Guardian reporting: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/05/lab-grown-sperm-and-eggs-scientists-reproduction

Cryolab supplies IVF clinics across the UK with cryogenic storage IVF equipment and fertility consumables. cryolab.co.uk