Without utilising sperm, eggs, or a womb, Israeli researchers were able to construct a model of a human embryo from stem cells, providing a rare look into the early phases of embryonic development.

According to the scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, the model mimics an embryo at day 14, when it has just begun to develop internal structures but has not yet laid the groundwork for body organs.

Following the release of a pre-print in June at the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) annual meeting in Boston, the researchers’ work was published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The Israeli researchers underlined that they had a long way to go before they could start from scratch with an embryo.

“The question is, when does an embryo model become considered an embryo? When that happens, we know the regulations. At the moment we are really, really far off from that point,” said team leader Jacob Hanna.

They said that the research could pave the way for fresh approaches to studying miscarriages, hereditary illnesses, and potentially the ability to grow organs and tissues for implantation.

“They are not identical. There are differences from human embryos, but still, this is the first time, if you open an atlas or a textbook, you can say – yeah I can really see the similarity between them,” said Hanna.

He claimed that his team had taken stem cells from adult human skin cells as well as others that had been cultivated in the lab, and had subsequently turned the cells back to an immature stage where they had the capacity to differentiate into several cell types.

After that, they were altered to create the nucleus of something that had an embryonic structure. It is neither an actual or artificial embryo, as the ISSCR and other scientists have critiqued the word, but rather a model illustrating how one functions.

“In about 1 percent of the aggregates we can see that the cells start differentiating correctly, migrating and sorting themselves into the correct structure, and the farthest we could get is day 14 in human embryo development,” he said.

Hanna stated that their next objective is to reach day 21 and a success rate criterion of 50%.

According to Magdalena Ernicka-Goetz, a professor of development and stem cells at the University of Cambridge, the work joins the publication this year of six other studies using models that are identical to human embryos from teams all around the world, including her lab.

“None of these models fully recapitulate natural human development but each adds to ways in which many aspects of human development can now be studied experimentally,” she said.

Hanna and others pointed out that the work raises certain moral concerns regarding the potential for future modification of human foetal development. However, he used nuclear physics as an example to illustrate the point that you shouldn’t cease all study in that area just because someone might decide to build a nuclear weapon.

He stated that “nothing done in the shadows” and genuine public involvement and education are crucial.

(Adapted from EconomicTimes.com)

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