What these Chinese researchers have just accomplished is simply historic. For the first time in the world, a team has succeeded in creating an artificial human embryo capable of developing its own organs. A scientific breakthrough that changes the game.
This discovery opens a concrete path towards the manufacture of human organs in the laboratory for patients awaiting transplants, a goal long considered unattainable, recalls an article on the New Atlas website.
To understand the magnitude of this discovery, we must focus on a key phenomenon: gastrulation. Between the 14th and 21st day after fertilization, the human embryo undergoes a radical transformation.
This is when it becomes a three-dimensional structure composed of three distinct layers: these are the precursors of all our organs. “Gastrulation is the moment when the embryo goes from a flat disc to a three-dimensional structure”explains Yu Leqian, lead author of the study.
Organ transplants on the horizon
It is prohibited to cultivate human embryos beyond 14 days after fertilization, making this developmental window impossible to study on real embryos. Artificial models do exist, but until now none have been truly faithful to the real process. It is thanks to space biology that researchers have managed to recreate an embryo as true to nature. This involves positioning the cells with great precision to best recreate the natural conditions of embryonic development.
The team was able to observe the embryos enter gastrulation and reproduce structures and processes of a real human embryo: cells migrating across the surface of the disc, a neural tube forming, a primitive intestine appearing with precursors to lungs, liver and pancreas, and even a primitive heart chamber contracting autonomously.
“This study lays the foundation for large-scale laboratory production of organ stem cells, paving the way for organ manufacturing and regenerative medicine”welcomes Yu Leqian. Concretely, this could one day make it possible to repair damaged tissues, or even to manufacture entire organs in the laboratory for patients awaiting transplants.
There is still a long way to go before human organs can be grown from artificial embryos, but this advance speeds up the timeline and provides researchers around the world with valuable information to design their own embryonic models.
