Spermatogenesis and Stem Cells

Fertility preservation

Testis development

Spermatogenesis & Stem Cells: We aim to unravel the mechanism of spermatogonial stem cell renewal and differentiation up to sperm and use this knowledge to understand spermatogenic failure in men.

Fertility preservation: We aim to develop a clinical application of human SSC autotransplantation and in vitro spermatogenesis as a way to preserve reproductive potential for instance in young boys diagnosed with cancer.

Ans van Pelt is Professor Translational Reproductive Medicine at Amsterdam Medical Center-location AMC. She did her PhD in the group of Prof. D.G. de Rooij at the Department of Cell Biology , University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University (UU) and P.T. van der Saag at the Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands and graduated in 1992 on ‘The Role of Retinoids in Spermatogenesis’. During this PhD period she worked on male reproduction and more specifically on spermatogonial stem cells and was the first to show that retinoids are important for the differentiation of spermatogonia. She moved with de Rooij’s lab to the Department of Endocrinology at the (UU) to study the spermatogonial stem cells in more detail using the synchronized vitamin A deficient animal models. She established an isolation method for spermatogonia and investigated several aspects of the mechanism behind self-renewal and differentiation of spermatogonial stem cells in vitro. In 2007, she moved from the UU to the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam to continue her research line on spermatogonial stem cells with a focus on human spermatogonial stem cells and future use for clinical fertility treatments. Under her supervision the first culture system to propagate human spermatogonial stem cells from adult and prepubertal human testis was established. This technique will now be further developed to a clinical application for fertility restoration in male childhood cancer survivors. Among others, she is secretary board member of the Dutch Society for Stem Cell Research (www.DSSCR.nl) and PI on ZonMW TAS 116003002 grant and was coordinator of the EU MSCA FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN network Growsperm (www.Growsperm.eu) and participant/beneficiary in several other EU, ZonMW, NWO and KiKa grants.