Edinburgh cancer study breakthrough

City scientists have made a breakthrough in studying testicular cancer in young men.

Experts already know that testicular cancer originates from the abnormal development of germ cells in foetuses.

However, how and why this happens has been impossible to explore before now.

In the latest study at the Medical Research Council Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh, experts formulated a new method for investigating how human testes develop. They took testicular tissue from donated foetuses and grafted it into mice, watching how the cells developed normally, as if inside a womb, over a six-week period.