Ans van Pelt

Ans is Professor Translational Reproductive Medicine at the AMC, and expert in human spermatogonial stem cell (SSC) isolation and culture. She has an interest in understanding how the SSC remain undifferentiated in culture, but also how they could be differentiated correctly to mature spermatozoa, so that SSC could either be used for transplantation purposes or to develop personalised disease models in vitro to study (male) infertility. During her PhD period she worked on male reproduction, specifically on SSC and was the first to show that retinoids are important for their differentiation towards sperm. She established an isolation method for spermatogonia and investigated self-renewal and differentiation of SSC in vitro. In 2007, she moved to the AMC to continue her research on human SSC and future use for clinical fertility treatments. Under her supervision the first transcriptome of adult human male germ cells throughout spermatogenesis was generated as well as the first in vitro system to propagate human SSC from adult and prepubertal human testis.

Relevant publications

  • Ieva Masliukaite, Elissavet Ntemou, Elizabeth A.M. (Lieke) Feijen, Marianne van de Wetering,, Andreas Meissner, Alexandre T. Soufan, Sjoerd Repping, Leontien M.C. Kremer, Kirsi Jahnukainen, Ellen Goossens, Ans M.M. van Pelt 2023 Childhood cancer and hematological disorders negatively affect spermatogonial quantity at diagnosis: a retrospective study of a male fertility preservation cohort. Hum Rep doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dead004
  • Iris Sanou, Jillis van Maaren, Jitske Eliveld, Qijing Lei, Andreas Meißner, Annemieke A. de Melker, Geert Hamer, Ans M. M. van Pelt and Callista L. Mulder 2022 Spermatogonial Stem Cell-Based Therapies: Taking Preclinical Research to the Next Level. Front. Endocrinol. DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2022.850219
  • Serrano JB, van Eekelen R, de Winter-Korver CM, van Daalen SKM, Tabeling NC, Catsburg LAE, Gijbels MJJ, Mulder CL, van Pelt AMM: Impact of restoring male fertility with transplantation of in vitro propagated spermatogonial stem cells on the health of their offspring throughout Life. Clinical and Translational Medicine 11 e531 : 1-6, 2021 DOI: 10.1002/ctm2.531
  • Eliveld J, van Daalen SKM, de Winter-Korver CM, van der Veen F, Repping S, Teerds K, van Pelt AMM (2020). A comparative analysis of human adult testicular cells expressing stem Leydig cell markers in the interstitium, vasculature and peritubular layer. Andrology 8:1265-1276
  • Struijk RB, Dorssers LCJ, Henneman P, Rijlaarsdam MA, Venema A, Jongejan A, Mannens MMAM, Looijenga LHJ, Repping S, van Pelt AMM (2020). Comparing genome-scale DNA methylation and CNV marks between adult human cultured ITGA6+ testicular cells and seminomas to assess in vitro genomic stability. Plos ONE 15: e0230253
  • Portela JMD, de Winter-Korver CM, van Daalen SKM, Meißner A, de Melker AA, Repping S, van Pelt AMM (2019). Assessment of fresh and cryopreserved testicular tissues from (pre)pubertal boys during organ culture as a strategy for in vitro spermatogenesis. Hum Reprod 34:2443-2455
  • Portela JMD, Mulder CL, van Daalen SKM, de Winter-Korver CM, Stukenborg JB, Repping S, van Pelt AMM (2019). Strains matter: success of murine in vitro spermatogenesis is dependent on genetic background. Dev Biol 456:25-30
  • Jan SZ, Vormer TL, Jongejan A, Röling MD, Silber SJ, de Rooij DG, Hamer G, Repping S, van Pelt AMM (2017). Unraveling transcriptome dynamics in human spermatogenesis. Development 144:3659-3673