PRE-EMBRYOS MADE IN LAB COULD SPUR RESEARCH, ETHICS DEBATES

For the first time, scientists have used human cells to make structures that mimic the earliest stages of development, which they say will pave the way for more research without running afoul of restrictions on using real embryos.

Two papers published this week in the journal Nature detail how two teams of scientists independently made such structures.

They stressed that their work is only for research, not reproduction, but it likely will pose new ethical questions.

“Studying early human development is really difficult. It’s basically a black box,” said Jun Wu, a stem cell biologist at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center.

“We believe our model can open up this field,” he said, if “you can test your hypothesis without using human embryos.”

Wu’s team used embryonic stem cells and the second team used reprogrammed skin cells to produce balls of cells that resemble one of the earliest stages of human development.

These balls, called blastocysts, form a few days after an egg has been fertilized but before the cells attach to the uterus to become an embryo. To differentiate their models from blastocysts created through fertilization, the researchers refer to the structures as “iBlastoids” and “human blastoids.”