https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/17/977573846/scientists-create-living-entities-that-closely-resemble-human-embryos

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Researchers Create 'Model Embryos' To Study Human Fertility : Shots -
Health News These structures made from living human cells are similar
to human embryos at the stage when they implant in the womb. They
allow scientists to research new ways to treat infertility.
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Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble
Human Embryos

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Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble
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Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble
Human Embryos

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March 17, 202112:01 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Rob Stein, photographed for NPR, 22 January 2020, in Washington DC.

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Scientists Create Living Entities In The Lab That Closely Resemble
Human Embryos

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[blastoid_w]
Enlarge this image

Jun Wu's team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
in Dallas have created hollow balls of cells that closely resemble
embryos at the stage when they usually implant in the womb -- known as
blastocysts. The new laboratory-made embryo-like entities have been
dubbed "blastoids." UT Southwestern Medical Center hide caption

toggle caption
UT Southwestern Medical Center

Jun Wu's team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
in Dallas have created hollow balls of cells that closely resemble
embryos at the stage when they usually implant in the womb -- known as
blastocysts. The new laboratory-made embryo-like entities have been
dubbed "blastoids."

UT Southwestern Medical Center

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.

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.

"I'm sure it makes anyone who is morally serious nervous when people
start creating structures in a petri dish that are this close to
being early human beings," says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a bioethicist at
Georgetown University.

"They're not quite there yet, and so that's good. But the more they
press the envelope, the more nervous I think anybody would get that
people are trying to sort of create human beings in a test tube,"
Sulmasy says.

Crucial periods of embryonic development are hidden inside women's
bodies during pregnancies and are therefore inaccessible to study.
And conducting experiments on human embryos in the laboratory is
difficult and controversial.

"We know a lot about animals like the mice and rats. But not a lot
with humans," says Jun Wu, a molecular biologist at the University of
Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who led one of the two
research teams publishing the results of the new experiments. "It is
really a black box."

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.

Scientists Create A Device That Can Mass-Produce Human Embryoids

Shots - Health News

Scientists Create A Device That Can Mass-Produce Human Embryoids

Scientists Make Model Embryos From Stem Cells To Study Key Steps In
Human Development

Shots - Health News

Scientists Make Model Embryos From Stem Cells To Study Key Steps In
Human Development

Now, Wu's team and an 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 -- known as blastocysts. The new laboratory-made embryo-like
entities have been dubbed "blastoids."

"We are very excited," says Jose Polo, a developmental biologist at
Australia's Monash University, who led the second experiment. "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.

"I would consider this as a major advance in the field," says
Jianping Fu, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the
research. "This is really the first complete model of a human
embryo."

"I think that creating embryo-like models is extremely important,"
agrees Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a biology professor at the
California Institute of Technology who has done similar research that
she's planning to publish.

The blastoids appear to have enough differences from naturally formed
embryos to prevent them from ever becoming a viable fetus or baby.
But they appear to be very close.

"Which then raises a very interesting question of, at what point does
an embryo model become a real embryo," says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist
at Case Western Reserve University and Harvard University.

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.

"This work is absolutely unnerving for many people because it really
challenges our tidy categories of what life is and when life begins.
This is what I call the biological-metaphysical time machine," Hyun
says.

Hyun agrees the research is very important and could lead to 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.

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.

"I think it should be done case by case in an incremental fashion,"
Hyun says. "I'm not in favor of having a complete free-for-all. I
think it should be carefully thought through for exceptional cases
here and there."

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?" says Kirstin Matthews, a fellow in science and
technology policy at Rice University. "I guess I watch too much sci
fi, because I find it really disturbing."

In fact, a team of scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute of
Science figured out how to grow mouse embryos outside the womb -- a
step toward creating an "artificial womb," according to a report
published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

  * fertility
  * medical ethics
  * embryonic stem cells

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