Scientists have created mouse embryos in the lab, and that could one day help families hoping to get pregnant, according to a new study.
After 10 years of research, scientists have created a synthetic embryo mouse that started to form organs without sperm or egg, according to the study published on Thursday (1st) in the journal Nature. Only stem cells were used.
Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can be manipulated to become mature cells with special functions.
“Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that make up the body,” said lead author Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, professor of mammalian development and cell biology. stem from the University of Cambridge, UK.
“It’s just unbelievable that we’ve come this far. This has been our community’s dream for years and a main focus of our work for a decade, and we finally made it.”
The paper is an exciting advance and addresses a challenge scientists face when studying mammalian embryos in the womb, said Marianne Bronner, a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (Caltech), who was not involved in the study.
“They develop outside the mother and therefore can be easily visualized through critical developmental stages that were previously difficult to access,” added Marianne.
The researchers say they hope to move from mouse embryos to creating models of natural human pregnancies — many of which fail in the early stages, Magdalena said.
By looking at embryos in a lab rather than in a uterus, scientists got a better look at the process to learn why some pregnancies can fail and how to avoid it, she added.
So far, researchers have only been able to trace about eight days of development in the synthetic mouse embryos, but the process is improving and they are already learning a lot, said study author Gianluca Amadei, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge.
“The process reveals the fundamental requirements that must be met to make the right structure of the embryo with its organs,” said Magdalena.
At this stage, the research doesn’t apply to humans and “there needs to be a high degree of improvement for this to be really useful,” said Benoit Bruneau, director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a senior researcher at the Gladstone Institutes, who was not involved in the research. study.
But the researchers see important uses for the future. The process can be used immediately to test new drugs, Magdalena said. But in the long term, as scientists move from synthetic mouse embryos to a human embryo model, this could also help build synthetic organs for people who need transplants, she added.
“I see this project as the first example of work of its kind,” said study author David Glover, a professor and researcher in biology and biological engineering at Caltech.
How the studies were carried out
In the womb, an embryo needs three types of stem cells to form: one becomes the body’s tissue, another the sac where the embryo develops, and the third the placenta that connects mothers and fetuses, according to the study.
In Magdalena’s lab, the researchers isolated the three types of stem cells from embryos and grew them in an inclined container to pool the cells and encourage dialogue between them.
Day by day, they were able to see the cluster of cells form into an increasingly complex structure, she said.
There is ethical and legal considerations to address before moving to synthetic human embryos , said Magdalena. And with the difference in complexity between mouse and human embryos, it could be decades before researchers are able to do a similar process for human models. said Marianne.
But in the meantime, information learned from the mouse models could help “fix failing tissues and organs,” Magdalena said.
The mystery of human life
The first few weeks after fertilization are made up of these three different stem cells that communicate chemically and mechanically so that the embryo can grow properly, the study said.
“Many pregnancies fail at this time, before most women realize they are pregnant,” said Magdalena, who is also a professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech. “This period is the basis for everything that follows in pregnancy. If it goes wrong, the pregnancy will fail.”
But at this stage, an embryo created through fertilization in vitro is already implanted in the mother, so scientists have limited visibility into the processes it is going through, said the expert.
They were able to develop the fundamentals of a brain — a first for models like these and a “holy grail for the field,” Glover said.
“This period of human life is so mysterious, so being able to see how it happens in the lab – having access to these individual stem cells, understanding why so many pregnancies fail and how we can prevent that from happening – is very special,” he said. Magdalena in a press release.
“We look at the dialogue that must take place between the different types of stem cells at that moment – we show how it happens and how it can go wrong.”
Source: CNN Brasil
