Biologists have successfully grown mouse embryos in an artificial uterus, marking a landmark achievement for research on mammal development in the womb.
The experiment, in which mouse embryos were taken from the uteruses of mice at five days of gestation and grown for six more days within artificial wombs, marked the first time scientists have successfully grown a developing embryo outside a mother’s womb, according to a review of the experiment published in Nature, a British weekly scientific journal.
“This work establishes for the first time that in a mammalian species, the processes of gastrulation and organogenesis can be jointly recapitulated entirely and adequately in the petri dish,” read the review.
The full gestation period for mice is around 20 days. At about halfway into the development process, the mice organs developed successfully along with their limbs and circulatory and nervous systems. The mice also had a heartbeat of around 170 beats per minute. The experiment was conducted in April 2020. Other details, such as the number of mice used, were not readily identifiable.
Experiments were performed at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel by researchers attempting to understand how gene mutations, nutrients, and environmental conditions may affect fetuses in the womb.
The research could aid scientists studying whether babies could one day be grown outside wombs, which some say raises ethical concerns.
“They’re not quite there yet, and so that’s good. But the more they press the envelope, the more nervous I think anybody would get that people are trying to sort of create human beings in a test tube,” Daniel Sulmasy, a bioethicist at Georgetown University, told the Washington Examiner.
Sulmasy commented on the potential implications the experiment could bring for future research on growing human embryos in an artificial womb, calling the study “a step further in terms of how long development of an embryo can be supported outside the womb.”
“In the long run, if there is an artificial womb, the issue will come up whether to ‘rescue’ human embryos that are aborted, as well as how far to develop human embryos or embryoids that have been used for research purposes,” Sulmasy added. “The technology may be closer than we think, and these issues will best be addressed before someone actually does create an artificial womb.”
Previous experiments conducted on artificial wombs did not render the groundbreaking results revealed in the Weizmann Institute study published Wednesday. Scientists have attempted to fertilize eggs from mammals in the laboratory and grow them, though the embryos did not survive because they required a living womb. By day 11, the embryos raised in the artificial womb matched the embryos of a living womb at the same age, but the lab-grown embryos became too large to survive without a blood supply. The artificial embryos developed a placenta and a yolk sack, though the nutrient solution that fed them through diffusion could no longer support their life.
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The Weizmann Institute did not immediately reply to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
