A team of stem cell researchers in Israel was able to create the world’s first synthetic embryos from mice stem cells, a scientific feat that could hold the key to ending animal testing in medical research and offer new solutions to healing people.
The embryos created by the scientists at Rehovot’s Weizmann Institute of Science are “synthetic” because their creation didn’t involve an egg or sperm, or even a mouse’s uterus.
The mouse stem cells - cells that can develop into any organ or tissue - were grown into an artificial womb for eight days, where they developed a rudimentary brain, an intestinal tract, and a beating heart.
After eight days - the equivalent of three months of pregnancy for a mouse - the embryo stopped growing.
The experiment is yet another success in the unfolding race to develop embryos from human and mouse stem cells, which the scientists at Weizmann Institute said could hold the key to understanding how organs develop in the embryos and one day create replacement organs for people who need a transplant.
But the research, published on Monday in the journal Cell, also raises ethical questions which leave many uncomfortable.
As scientists’ ability to turn stem cells into human organs, and even embryos, gets more and more sophisticated and successful, reaching goals that we would have once considered impossible, have we stopped to think about boundaries?
This was the question that the International
Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) tried to respond to last year,
when it issued new guidelines limiting the cultivation of human embryos
in the laboratory to 14 days, before the first signs of the nervous system start appearing. After that, the embryos must be destroyed. Source
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