By: Cedric Wu

Israelian stem cell researchers have synthesized mouse embryos without sperm or egg cells in order to understand how organs develop in a growing organism. The embryos were grown in an artificial womb for eight days where they developed a brain, a beating heart, and a digestive tract.

The experiment and its research were published on Monday in the journal Cell, based around a concept that an embryo could develop from a collection of embryonic stem cells. The experiment was imperfect, however, as many of the embryos did not develop a heartbeat. Thus, it was only seen as the first step in developing synthesized human embryos.

Jacob Hanna, the leader and facilitator of the research, believes that studying artificial embryos without the limits of a womb could help produce synthetic organs and complex tissues, greatly revolutionizing the field of stem cell therapy. Hanna’s study was 7 years in the making with the whole study being conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science

Hanna developed a company known as Renewal Bio, planning to use this newly found technology for therapy. A possible use could be taking skin cells from women with fertility problems, reprogram them into stem cells, and use it to create an artificial embryo that could be used to produce eggs.

The hope for stem cell therapy is to regrow damaged human tissue for decades. Stem cells can develop into any tissue naturally but doing it artificially is extremely difficult. Hanna suspects that openly studying the development of organs within an embryo could provide important clues. Artificial mouse embryos are far from the intended product and it will most likely take several years to start developing an artificial human embryo.

“Our goal is not making pregnancy outside the uterus, whether it’s mice or any species,” says Hanna. “We are really facing difficulties making organs — and in order to make stem cells become organs, we need to learn how the embryo does that. We started with this because the uterus is a black box — it is not transparent.”

The development of realistic lab-grown human embryos poses a difficult question, however: should we treat these artificial embryos the same as real ones? The humanity of Hanna’s study becomes questionable when you begin to consider the embryos as living and conscious.

If the synthesized embryos are indeed similar to real embryos then they deserve the same protection and care. Using and disposing of living human embryos, even if they are artificial, could result in serious consequences and division. Such a cost could make the project not worth it.

The morality of the situation has forced discussion among scientists. Development of real human embryos was originally only allowed for 14-days in a lab, but that rule was lifted last year by the International Society for Stem Cell Research.

“The mouse is a starting point for thinking about how one wants to approach this in humans,” says stem cell biologist Alex Meissner. “It’s not necessary to be alarmed or raise any panic, but … as we learn, it’s important to have in parallel the discussion: How far do we want to take it?”

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/aug/03/scientists-create-worlds-first-synthetic-embryos

Link to article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/08/01/synthetic-mouse-embryo/