Ectogenesis: ethical challenges in creating artificial wombs
Appeared in BioNews 1090
Three new reports in Nature illuminate the potential to transform artificial wombs from a laboratory tool into a procedure to grow and maintain a human embryo from fertilisation until birth.
Two papers reported the generation of human blastocysts by culturing non-embryonic cells under specific conditions to transform them into blastocyst-like structures, called blastoids. In one study scientists treated stem cells derived from an established stem cell line with specific growth factors to generate the blastoids. In the second study, scientists used adult skin cells to reprogram them into blastoids.
In the same issue, Nature reported that scientists have developed an artificial womb that allows the development of early mouse embryos into a fetus that contained fully formed organs. In this study, scientists at Weizmann Institute of Science implanted mouse blastocysts into their artificial place
Ethics of genetically reconstituting oocytes
Appeared in BioNews 1085
In the 16 December issue of Nature, researchers reported that the addition of eight transcription factors to pluripotent stem cells converted them into a primary oocyte-like cell. While these cells did not undergo normal meiosis, and therefore did not have the correct number of gamete chromosomes, they could be fertilised by sperm to initiate partial embryonic development, with some even progressing to an eight-cell morula stage.
This achievement enhances our understanding of oocyte maturation and may have useful clinical applications in reproductive technologies. In mitochondrial donation, for instance, an oocyte is obtained from a woman with genetically defective mitochondria. The nucleus from this oocyte is removed and put into an enucleated donor oocyte obtained from a woman with healthy mitochondria. This transcription-stem cell-based approach could one day be used to generate enucleated oocytes (cytoplasts