DIOLs (technology produces primary germ cells)

2022: Technology announcement to address infertility

At the end of August 2022, the Japanese biotechnology company Dioseve announced that it had learned to grow human oocytes, or eggs, from other human tissues. The goal of the project is to help people suffering from infertility.

The Dioseve mission may seem like a way out of science fiction, but it is based on a science technique called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which was first developed in 2006. The startup's scientific lead, Dr. Nobuhiko Hamazaki, a research specialist at the University of Washington, created a Dioseve technology called DIOLs, directly induced oocyte-like cells. DIOLs technology can massively turn iPS cells into oocytes and is being tested for August 2022.

In 2022, Dioseve raised $3 million under the leadership of ANRI and with the participation of Coral Capital. The funding will allow the company to hire more employees and accelerate research and development. Dioseve seeks to prove its concept by conducting experiments on the birth of mice using oocytes obtained by DIOLs. In early summer 2022, the biotech company opened a new lab in Tokyo and hired an iPS specialist.

DIOLs technology creates oocyte-like cells directly from iPS cells without exposing primordial germ cells, or sperm and oocyte source. The technology differentiates them to find oogony or oocyte precursor and then injects genes into iPS cells. This means that infertility patients could potentially use DIOLs to produce offspring with their own genetic material.

Dioseve's scientific supervisor, Dr. Nobuhiko Hamazaki, explains this by the fact that induced pluripotent stem cells can be used to grow all cells in the body. For example, other researchers are finding ways to use iPS to grow organs outside the body, induce beta cells in the pancreas in an attempt to cure diabetes. The technology can also be used in the creation of neural stem cells for the treatment of spinal injuries due to the fact that iPS cells can be obtained from tissues such as muscles or blood cells.^[1]

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