Keio University Ethics Panel OKs Uterus Transplant Clinical Trial

From Jiji

February 27 2025

TOKYO – Japan’s Keio University said Thursday 27th February that its ethics committee has approved clinical research in which women without uteruses are given transplants of other people’s uteruses in order to become pregnant and give birth. 

The university said it will consider whether to carry out the research, which would be the first uterine transplant procedure in Japan.

The research proposal calls for recruiting three women in their 20s or 30s with Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, who were born without a uterus. Under the plan, researchers will first produce fertilized eggs through in vitro fertilization using the women’s eggs and their husbands’ sperm.

They will then transplant uteruses from donors, expected to be mothers or other relatives, and insert the fertilized eggs. The plan aims to achieve the women’s pregnancy and childbirth.

A research team from Keio University applied in November 2011 for approval from the university’s ethics committee, after the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences published a report in July 2021 that gave the green light to conducting uterine transplants as clinical research.