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Stem cells used to model a two-week-old human embryo

Researchers have used stem cells to create models that resemble human embryos at two weeks old, but bypass the earliest developmental stages — paving the way for studies that are not possible in human embryos.
By
  1. Naomi Moris

    1. Naomi Moris is in The Francis Crick Institute, 1 Midland Way, London NW1 1AT, UK.

Ask a person on the street what a 13-day-old human embryo looks like, and you might hear a broad range of answers. Some might imagine a formless clump of cells, others a fetus-in-miniature with recognizable features such as limbs, eyes or a heart. In truth, the architecture of the two-week-old embryo is more like a series of nested cellular bubbles, or fluid-filled cavities, that support the development of a relatively simple cell layer that will eventually give rise to a fetus. Similar structures have been made entirely from stem cells, as reported in Nature by Oldak et al.1, by Pedroza et al.2 and Weatherbee et al.3.

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Nature 622, 469-470 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03150-y

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Competing Interests

N.M. is an inventor on two patents owned by the University of Cambridge, PCT/GB2019/052668 & PCT/GB2019/052670, covering gastruloid models.

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