The stem cells organized themselves until they developed beating hearts and the foundations of the brain and yolks where the fetus receives nutrients in its first weeks. Unlike other synthetic embryos, these stem cells reached a point where the entire brain began to develop. This is the most that has been achieved in any other stem cell function, the scientists noted. The research could help understand why some embryos fail while others develop into a healthy pregnancy, and could also be used to guide the repair and development of synthetic human organs for transplant. “Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that make up the body,” said researcher Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology at the University of Cambridge in England. . “It’s just incredible that we’ve come this far,” he said in a university press release. “This has been the dream of our community for years, and a major focus of our work for a decade, and we finally did it.” For a human embryo to develop successfully, a dialogue is needed between the tissues that become the embryo and the tissues that connect the embryo to the mother. In the first weeks, three types of stem cells develop: one will become the tissues of the body, and the other two support the development of the embryo. “So many pregnancies fail at this time before most women even realize they’re pregnant,” Zernicka-Goetz explained. “This period is the basis for everything else that follows in the pregnancy, if it goes wrong, the pregnancy will fail. “The stem cell embryo model is important because it gives us access to the developing structure at a stage that is normally hidden from us due to the implantation of the tiny embryo in the mother’s uterus,” he said. “This period of human life is so mysterious, to be able to see how it happens in a dish — to have access to these individual stem cells, to understand why so many pregnancies fail and how we can prevent it from happening — is very special,” Zernicka-Goetz said. “We looked at the dialogue that needs to take place between the different types of stem cells at that time — we showed how it occurs and how it can go wrong.” Although the research was done in mouse models, researchers are developing human models that could create specific types of organs to understand these critical processes that are impossible to study in human embryos. If these methods are successful with human stem cells, they could also be used to guide the development of synthetic organs for patients awaiting transplants, the researchers said. “There are so many people around the world who wait years for organ transplants,” Zernicka-Goetz said. “What makes our work so exciting is that the knowledge that comes from it could be used to develop proper synthetic human organs to save lives that are currently lost. It should also be possible to affect and heal adult organs using the knowledge we have of how they are made’. The report was published Aug. 25 in the journal Nature. More information For more on stem cells, head to the US National Library of Medicine. SOURCE: University of Cambridge, news release, 25 August 2022
