By Express News Service
PARIS: Scientists have used stem cells to create structures that resemble human embryos in the lab, in a first that has prompted calls for stricter regulation in the rapidly advancing field. Several different labs around the world have released pre-print studies in the past seven days describing their research, which experts said should be treated with caution.
The labs used different techniques to encourage human embryonic stem cells, which can become any type of cell, to self-assemble into a structure that resembles an embryo— without needing sperm, an egg or fertilisation. The aim is to give scientists a model with which to study human embryos in ways never before possible.
The first announcement was last Wednesday, when Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz of Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology described her team’s work at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.
On Thursday, the team of Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel published a pre-print study detailing their own work on stem cell-based human embryo models. The Zernicka-Goetz team then quickly published a pre-print of their own, giving more information. Within a few weeks of each other in August last year, both the Zernicka-Goetz and Hanna teams published papers about their work creating the first embryo-like structures using stem cells from mice.
Hanna rejected the idea that either team was “first”, saying they had achieved quite different feats. He said his models had a “placenta, a yolk sac, amniotic cavity” and other embryo features that he said the Zernicka-Goetz structures lacked.
RegulationsRegulations for research in this area differ between countries but most apply to embryos that have been fertilised—a loophole the new embryo-like models slip through. Cambridge University said it launched a project to develop the first governance framework for stem cell-based human embryo models in the UK.
(*with agency inputs)
PARIS: Scientists have used stem cells to create structures that resemble human embryos in the lab, in a first that has prompted calls for stricter regulation in the rapidly advancing field. Several different labs around the world have released pre-print studies in the past seven days describing their research, which experts said should be treated with caution.
The labs used different techniques to encourage human embryonic stem cells, which can become any type of cell, to self-assemble into a structure that resembles an embryo— without needing sperm, an egg or fertilisation. The aim is to give scientists a model with which to study human embryos in ways never before possible.
The first announcement was last Wednesday, when Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz of Cambridge University and the California Institute of Technology described her team’s work at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.
On Thursday, the team of Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel published a pre-print study detailing their own work on stem cell-based human embryo models. The Zernicka-Goetz team then quickly published a pre-print of their own, giving more information. Within a few weeks of each other in August last year, both the Zernicka-Goetz and Hanna teams published papers about their work creating the first embryo-like structures using stem cells from mice.
Hanna rejected the idea that either team was “first”, saying they had achieved quite different feats. He said his models had a “placenta, a yolk sac, amniotic cavity” and other embryo features that he said the Zernicka-Goetz structures lacked.
Regulations
Regulations for research in this area differ between countries but most apply to embryos that have been fertilised—a loophole the new embryo-like models slip through. Cambridge University said it launched a project to develop the first governance framework for stem cell-based human embryo models in the UK.
(*with agency inputs)
