Engineering Biomaterials for Testicular Tissue Engineering and In Vitro Spermatogenesis

Male infertility is a severe medical and social problem worldwide, with one in every 15 males being diagnosed as infertile. In any case, the loss of fertility is due to pre- or post-meiotic barriers to spermatogenesis and is challenging to treat. The regular treatments include supplementation or substitution of androgen and testicular prosthetic graft but have been found to cause medical complications. To date, no appropriate methods mimicking the physiological conditions have been developed in the reconstruction of testis functions. Testicular tissue engineering is emerging as a potential approach to solve this problem. It requires developing a scaffold with a unique structure and morphology and mimics the extracellular matrix (ECM) structure to imitate various functions performed by the ECM. This chapter discusses different biomaterials that might provide structural support for the spatial distribution of cells to create a niche for in vitro spermatogenesis.