The pups produced from the new technique even went on to thave their own babies. gorkem demir/Shutterstock

Earlier this year it was revealed that scientists had been able to create viable sperm in the lab from mouse skin cells. Now a team of Japanese researchers has announced that they have managed to do the same, only for egg cells. They were then able to fertilize these eggs and form embryos that were implanted into surrogates, which gave birth to healthy pups.

This is the first report of anyone being able to develop fully mature and more importantly feasible eggs in a laboratory setting. Published in Nature, the researchers describe growing the eggs from skin cells taken from an adult’s tail that were then transformed into stem cells, essentially turning back the time for the cells.

The scientists were then able to direct their development until they formed egg cells. Once they had achieved this, they were then fertilized and implanted. Close to 12 pups were born, which were then able to go on and have their own offspring, seemingly without issue.

“This study represents a major accomplishment; it is very impressive indeed,” explained Professor Azim Surani, from the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge, and who was not involved in the study.

“The work is robust and in my view will be reproduced by other labs. Now we need additional data and observations, particularly on term embryos to see how many develop normally and what happened to those that did not. Do we anticipate or observe any developmental abnormalities?”