A new technique can turn a woman’s skin cells into eggs

Nuclear fusionPhotograph: Mitalipov laboratory

Sep 30th 2025|4 min read

MANY COUPLES struggle to conceive. Some are helped by IVF (in-vitro fertilisation). But if the woman has no usable eggs to fertilise, they must either give up or use a donor. Researchers have thus worked for years to create eggs for women who lack them. So far they have succeeded only in mice, but that could be about to change. In a paper just published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists report they have—albeit imperfectly—made fertilisable human eggs from skin cells.