Utah biotech claims lab-grown sperm can create embryos in fertility breakthrough

At a glance:

• Paterna Biosciences says it has grown mature, motile sperm from spermatogonial stem cells and used them to create human embryos, potentially helping infertile men father biological children.
• The procedure is projected to cost $5,000 to $12,000 — cheaper than a single IVF cycle ($15,000–$30,000) — but has not yet been peer-reviewed.
• Past claims of lab-grown sperm (Kallistem 2015, a 2009 retracted paper) were disputed; Paterna was recognized last year by the Mayo Clinic–Arizona State University MedTech Accelerator program.

A fertility gap that affects more than one in eight men

More than one in eight American men between the ages of 25 and 49 now experience some form of infertility, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The problem is truly global in scope, and it has driven millions of dollars in both public and private research over the past decade. A Utah-based biotech firm called Paterna Biosciences, working with support from the Mayo Clinic, announced this week that it has successfully grown mature sperm — ready to swim — out of spermatogonial stem cells in the lab. The company says the technique could soon help men who struggle with infertility to conceive biological children, potentially sidestepping the need for donor sperm or adoption.

Larry Lipshultz, a urologist at Baylor College and a specialist in male reproductive health, weighed in on the research as an outside expert for Wired. "This is huge," Lipshultz said. "People didn't understand, or had never figured out, what growth factors you have to supply to these cells to get them to become mature sperm." He added that Paterna appears to have identified those critical substances, which is a major step forward for a field that has been chasing this goal for years.

How the lab-grown sperm was created

Paterna Biosciences' cofounder Alexander Pastuszak, an associate professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a urologist himself, described the work as the first major innovation in this space since the dawn of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) more than 30 years ago. In a promotional video released this past summer, Pastuszak explained that his team started by investigating whether the cellular make-up of human testicular tubules — where sperm cells mature from stem cells organically — could be cultured in the lab. Computational biology methods eventually proved to be the more viable approach.

The company's team learned to reproduce key molecular signals via ligands, a proprietary cell culture growth medium, and other processes to guide sperm-making stem cells through spermatogenesis. "We figured out the molecular programming for spermatogenesis," Pastuszak said, "and then used those learnings to develop an in vitro platform that allows us to now grow sperm." The result, according to Paterna, is mature, normal sperm that behaves like naturally produced cells.

From sperm to embryos: what Paterna has tested so far

Pastuszak and his team at Paterna next used the lab-grown sperm to create test embryos, intended solely as a preliminary validation of the method's safety. These embryos were not used to create a pregnancy; they exist only as proof-of-concept data. The company reported that the resulting embryos looked healthy at the provisional stage, though much more testing is needed before any clinical application could be considered.

Paterna's next steps will involve larger and more detailed research into how the methods might work with stem cells taken from men who actually have infertility, as well as further testing on still more experimental embryos to check for any evidence of developmental or genetic abnormalities. Until those studies are complete and the findings are scrutinized by the broader scientific community, the technology remains early-stage.

Why peer review still matters here

Paterna Biosciences' possible breakthrough has not yet been vetted through publication in a peer-reviewed journal or an outside review — a caveat that carries real weight in this field. At least one other biotech company, Kallistem, based in France, prematurely claimed success developing sperm in the lab, only to have those results challenged by outside experts in 2015. An even earlier claim to the same milestone was retracted from a journal in 2009 over allegations of plagiarism and suspicions of worse misconduct.

Those precedents mean that the scientific community will be watching closely to see whether Paterna's data holds up under independent scrutiny. The firm does have a pedigree that should bolster some confidence: Paterna was among ten life science companies accepted last year into the MedTech Accelerator program jointly run by the Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University, and the company was awarded the program's Disruption Award for its research. Being selected by that particular accelerator signals that experienced reviewers see potential in the underlying science, even if the proof is not yet published.

Cost and access: a cheaper alternative, but not a guaranteed one

Even if Paterna's breakthrough holds up, at least one reproductive health professional who spoke to Wired noted that the procedure's cost may still prove to be a hurdle for men hoping to conceive. The company said it expects the procedure will cost between $5,000 and $12,000 — a lot of cash, but cheaper than the $15,000 to $30,000 typically charged for a single cycle of traditional in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The true cost of Paterna's novel procedure, however, may wind up governed less by the technology itself and more by government healthcare policies or the business decisions of private equity groups that have transformed fertility clinics into a billion-dollar industry. "Policies that affect the affordability of IVF have major impacts on the use of IVF treatments, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum," as Stanford health policy researcher Maria Polyakova put it in 2024. "This, in turn, means that insurance coverage of IVF ultimately affects the distribution of children across the income spectrum."

What to watch next

Paterna Biosciences will need to publish its findings in a peer-reviewed journal and survive outside review before the technique can move toward any clinical application. The company will also need to demonstrate that lab-grown sperm derived from infertile men's stem cells can produce viable embryos without introducing genetic or developmental defects. If those hurdles are cleared, the technology could reshape fertility treatment for millions of men worldwide — but the path from promising lab results to a bedside option is long, and the regulatory and economic landscape around IVF will determine who ultimately benefits.

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fertility-treatment, lab-grown-sperm, paterna-biosciences, male-infertility, mayo-clinic, in-vitro-fertilization