A wave of stem-cell systems are enabling researchers to unpick what happens after an embryo implants in the uterus.
Cells in culture typically form continuous sheets, like skin. But in 2017, bioengineer Jianping Fu realized that if he cultured human stem cells in a 3D scaffold, they would spontaneously organize into structures that looked, under a microscope, a bit like an embryo. Gene-expression analyses suggested the cells were similar to those in an embryo immediately after it implants in the uterus, meaning they could serve as experimental models for a previously opaque point in early development.
Researchers have long sought to observe and study these developmental stages. But working with human embryos has always been technically and ethically fraught. Animal models go only so far in mimicking humans. Natural human embryos, donated by people undergoing fertility treatment, are hard to come by. And until May this year, scientists were barred from culturing such embryos in the laboratory for longer than two weeks after fertilization.
Various embryo-like models exist. They include blastoids, which mimic the stages before the embryo implants into the uterus, and gastruloids, which model formation of the body plan and organ precursors. Others include tissues that surround the embryo, such as the yolk sac and amniotic cavity , and some recapitulate the early steps of brain, spinal-cord and heart formation, which occurs around day 22 of human development.
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