Effects of clinical medications on male fertility and prospects for stem cell therapy

Peiting Mo; Ziran Zhao; Xinpeng Ke; Yong Fan; Chaohui Li

doi:10.3389/fcell.2023.1258574

Effects of clinical medications on male fertility and prospects for stem cell therapy

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2023 Sep 18:11:1258574. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2023.1258574. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Peiting Mo¹, Ziran Zhao¹, Xinpeng Ke¹, Yong Fan¹, Chaohui Li¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory for Major Obstetric Diseases of Guangdong Province, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Key Laboratory of Reproduction and Genetics of Guangdong Higher Education Institutes, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.

Abstract

An increasing number of men require long-term drug therapy for various diseases. However, the effects of long-term drug therapy on male fertility are often not well evaluated in clinical practice. Meanwhile, the development of stem cell therapy and exosomes treatment methods may provide a new sight on treating male infertility. This article reviews the influence and mechanism of small molecule medications on male fertility, as well as progress of stem cell and exosomes therapy for male infertility with the purpose on providing suggestions (recommendations) for evaluating the effect of drugs on male fertility (both positive and negative effect on male fertility) in clinical application and providing strategies for diagnosis and treatment of male infertility.

Keywords: clinical medications; exosomes therapy; male fertility; spermatogenesis; stem cell therapy.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by grants from National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA0110804, 2021YFC2700904 to YF); Guangzhou Science and technology planning project (2023A03J0043 to CL); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (3210060082 to CL) and Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2020A1515010877 to CL).