"A marriage of anti-aging research and fertility research"

MIT Technology Review asks,

Should we let families desperate for children experiment with technologies whose efficacy has not been proven?

The founding of OvaScience came about as a marriage of two of medicine’s most audacious and often controversial areas: anti-aging research and infertility research. The company specifically traces its scientific origins to the work of the reproductive biologist Jonathan Tilly, now at Northeastern University in Boston. Beginning with a 2004 paper, Tilly has been challenging decades of scientific dogma that girls are born with their whole life’s supply of “primordial” egg cells, which will eventually mature into eggs. After puberty, this stock of eggs matures at the rate of about one a month, and it never renews. The decline in female fertility around 35 occurs as this supply dries up, and menopause strikes when the eggs run out. But Tilly’s research suggested—first in mice and then in people—that the lining of the ovary contains the makings of a new supply. If Tilly is right about his conclusions, solving infertility might be just a matter of finding these egg-precursor cells and triggering them to mature.

Read more here.