Uterus Transplants Hit the Clinic

With human research trials resulting in dozens of successful deliveries in the US and abroad, doctors move toward offering the surgery clinically, while working to learn all they can about uterine and transplant biology from the still-rare procedure.

Written byJef Akst

| 30 min read

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Learning at age 14 that she had a developmental abnormality that left her with no uterus, Jennifer Dingle didn’t immediately understand or share the devastation that she could see in her mom’s eyes. But years later, after she got married and her friends began getting pregnant, she fell into a depression thinking about how she would be able to have a family of her own. The options, gestational surrogacy and adoption, didn’t appeal to her. She wanted to carry her own child.

She first heard about a more palatable solution to her predicament in her mid-20s, when her gynecologist mentioned that uterus transplantation was beginning to enter clinical trials. The doctor told her not to count on the experimental procedure, which was only just beginning to be tested in humans, but Dingle began looking into it. She found an ongoing clinical trial in Sweden ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
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Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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