Researchers Create 'Model Embryos' To Study Human Fertility : Shots - Health News : NPR - 0 views
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For decades, science has been trying to unlock the mysteries of how a single cell becomes a fully formed human being and what goes wrong to cause genetic diseases, miscarriages and infertility.Now, scientists have created living entities in their labs that resemble human embryos; the results of two new experiments are the most complete such "model embryos" developed to date.
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The goal of the experiments is to gain important insights into early human development and find new ways to prevent birth defects and miscarriages and treat fertility problems.But the research, which was published in two separate papers Wednesday in the journal Nature Portfolio, raises sensitive moral and ethical concerns.
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Crucial periods of embryonic development are hidden inside women's bodies during pregnancies and therefore inaccessible to study. And conducting experiments on human embryos in the laboratory is difficult and controversial.
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So in recent years, scientists started creating structures that resemble human embryos in the lab by using chemical signals to coax cells into forming themselves into entities that look like very primitive human embryos.
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Now, Wu's team and another international team of scientists have gone further than ever before. They created hollow balls of cells that closely resemble embryos at the stage when they usually implant in the womb, which are known as blastocysts. The new laboratory-made embryos have been dubbed "blastoids."
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Now with this technique we can make hundreds of these structures. So this will allow us to scale up our understanding of very early human development. We think this will be very important." Some other scientists are hailing the research.
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The blastoids appear to have enough differences from naturally formed embryos to prevent them ever becoming a viable fetus or baby. But they appear to be very close.
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The two experiments started with different cells to get similar results. Wu's group created his blastoids from human embryonic stem cells, and from "induced pluripotent stem cells," which are made from adult cells. Polo's group started with adult skin cells.
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Hyun agrees the research is very important and could lead to a many other advances. But Hyun says it's important to come up with clear guidelines about how scientists can responsibly be permitted to pursue this kind of research.
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Hyun favors revising a guideline known as the 14-day rule, which prohibits experiments on human embryos in the lab beyond two weeks of their existence. Hyun says exceptions should be allowed under certain carefully reviewed conditions.
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But others worry about easing the 14-day rule.That could mean "we could just keep growing these sort-of humans in a test tube and not even considering the fact that they're so close to being human, right?"
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In fact, another team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel figured out how to grow mouse embryos outside the womb — a step toward creating an "artificial womb," according to report published Wednesday in the journal Nature.