Human embryo models grown from stem cells

https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/human-embryo-models-grown-stem-cells

by testelastic • 3 years ago

133 68 3 years ago

wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il

A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute have successfully created an 'embryo model' that closely resembles a 14-day-old human embryo, without using sperm, eggs or womb.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

The question I have is why they call it a model?

It is certainly not a simulation, and although it apparently started with different components they manipulated those to behave the way the normal versions do.

What would happen if they implanted it in a womb?

Retric4• 3 years ago

It’s a model because it’s not completely equivalent. Medicine has learned a great deal from studying rodents, but humans are quite different.

For one thing human embryos would have already been implanted in a womb for a week at that point and a great deal of signaling occurs between embryo and the uterus.

Stevvo• 3 years ago

We don't know what will happen. Further research will provide more answers.

tkahnoski• 3 years ago

Another commenter linked to an earlier Nature article where 'Model' is a particularly carved out word in the ethical guidelines. https://archive.ph/Xnx5n#selection-1171.0-1171.349

patall• 3 years ago

It's one of the two publications that raised a controversy in June, for example discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36330732

A summary on Nature news at the times: https://archive.ph/Xnx5n

arthur2e52• 3 years ago

Nice, the Nature news article links to the biorxiv version of three papers. The one linked by TFA is Oldak, https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.14.544922.

kleiba2• 3 years ago

I used to be a researcher in NLP until not too long ago. Over the last few years, increasing pressure has been put on on everyone trying to publish papers related to training data collected through human trials to provide ethics statements as a way to ensure that certain standards are met regarding that data. Not everyone is able to see too much sense in this process, and I've heard comments from non-US colleagues that it reflects a purely American world view. But I think that there are at least some applications where ethical consideration are definitely worth talking about, eg., in applications such as hate speech detection.

And of course, even if you don't agree with the necessity for ethics statements, because it is just one more thing that takes up time you could otherwise spend on your actual job (doing research), you certainly don't want to risk having your paper rejected just because you don't meet whatever ethics standards the conference or journal seeks to uphold.

But remember, I'm talking natural language processing here.

In that light, it is a complete mystery to me how research like the one described in the article could have possibly, ever made it past an ethics review. Unless, of course, completely different standards are applied - which in itself would be rather questionable.

dekhn2• 3 years ago

Why do you believe this work would not have passed an ethics review?

(your comments are a bit obscure, in a way that suggests you aren't familiar with how modern biological research is evaluated)

kleiba2• 3 years ago

I have no doubt that it passed an ethics review. I'm sorry if my comment seemed to suggest otherwise.

I suppose what I was trying to get at was a suspicion that ethics reviews in today's research landscape (not only in the medical field, but others as well) seem to me more like a lip service. And don't get me wrong, that's just an opinion, I'm sure a lot of you think otherwise.

numpad0• 3 years ago

It's that modern computer science around Web is just total Stanford prison experiment when it comes to ethics. A/B testing, heatmap collection, user generated data collection, those are all human subject researches and should be required to have an independent board in a University.

These guys have established processes and justifications to do these experiments. It was always just wrong that Web has none, and it also makes no sense to assume that just because the process look substantial judged by norms of other industries they must have ignored it.

rmbyrro2• 3 years ago

That sounds to me like opening console and messing up with the website's JS code :D

arthur2e52• 3 years ago

Biologists have been messing with the console since a long time ago. They figured out what each gene does in large part by turning them off one by one, or occasionally making them run more than they should (overexpression). Even before they had the whole genome, they used random mutagenesis and slowly analyzed what got broken by breeding experiments. With enough data you can even locate it on a chromosome relative to known genes by linkage maps.

The most fun stuff to mess with is of course parts that controls how other stuff works. Figuring out what makes stem cells want to grow into shapes will lead us to more of these control switches.

rmbyrro2• 3 years ago

I did not comment negatively about the tech, to be clear

KorematsuFredt• 3 years ago

Reducing human suffering is a noble goal and infertile couples could benefit from this research. I would rather have western world make giant leaps in this field and also set the direction of ethics here rather than just banning it and leaving it up to Russia and China to conduct this sort of research in their secret facilities.

antisthenes• 3 years ago

Don't worry, Russia isn't in any position for this high-tech research. Anyone who's been anywhere close to capable of doing this work has left since 2014 or 2022.

China is a bigger risk factor, but it's not like they would care about the direction of western ethics anyway.

goodbyesf• 3 years ago

Reducing human suffering is a noble goal and infertile couples could benefit from this research.

The research isn't about reducing human suffering. No research is. All research is about attaining new knowledge.

I would rather have western world make giant leaps in this field and also set the direction of ethics here rather than just banning it and leaving it up to Russia and China to conduct this sort of research in their secret facilities.

Why? Given the history of the western world in biological, chemical and nuclear genocides, why is it better that the west make sets the directin of ethics than russia or china. The west has proven it hasn't a ethical bone in our body.

Research should happen because humans want to learn and advance. The west ain't saints. The russians and chinese certainly aren't monsters, especially compared ot the west.

abledon• 3 years ago

population collapse: solved {checkmark}

warring super-solider arms race: {added to jira board}

TeMPOraL2• 3 years ago

Out of all sci-fi/fantasy ideas out there, I'd never have thought Star Wars: Attack of the Clones would show up as a possible future. But as we are making rapid advancements in robotics and AI on one hand, and biotech on the other, and the relevant fields are controlled by different corporate interests, clones fighting droids doesn't seem so out there anymore.

natechols• 3 years ago

the relevant fields are controlled by different corporate interests

As opposed to governments, which are famously cautious about deploying destructive technology, and scrupulously avoid civilian casualties.

lo_zamoyski3• 3 years ago

the progression of the commodification of human beings: on schedule.

dragonelite• 3 years ago

Give a normal person some steroids and strength/endurance training exercise regiment. You will have a person that is 80~100% stronger then your average male within 7~10 months. A lot quicker and cheaper then waiting 20 years for a embryo to grown up.

idosh• 3 years ago

The goal eventually is to be able to create organs in lab condition that can be implanted

polski-g• 3 years ago

The hard part of children is the womb and available parents, not creating an embryo. The UK needs to finish their artificial womb work.

justrealist• 3 years ago

There are millions of couples going through IVF that fail to get viable embryos. Probably 3/4 of women over 40 fail to get any successful pregnancies, and many younger ones too.

mtmail• 3 years ago

Depends how much over 40. "At age 40: 44% will have a conception ending in a live birth within one year, 64% will have a conception ending in a live birth within four years" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_and_female_fertility

ipaddr• 3 years ago

Why wouldn't the state raise them? We've been moving away from the traditional family.

gustavus• 3 years ago

Please Don't create the Torment Nexus

debok• 3 years ago

Moving away from the traditional family has detrimental effects for the children. See this Wikipedia page and it's citations for a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_absence

123yawaworht456• 3 years ago

no, we haven't. that's a view held by 0.00001% of the population in a handful of western countries

thedailymail• 3 years ago

The lab that published this paper has also been developing an ex vivo environment for growing these kinds of human embryoids by what's called rolling culture. Other groups specializing in extremely premature neonatal care have been pushing the gestational envelope from the other direction.

lo_zamoyski3• 3 years ago

The truly hard part is raising them to be decent human beings. There is more to procreation than fertilization and carrying to term.

While an artificial womb could be very useful as a medical device to save the life of the child, in vitro/ex vivo methods of reproduction only entrench human alienation. Support for them bespeaks an absence of a sound philosophical anthropology. And I mean not just the alienation of the children, but the alienation of men and women from their own humanity as well. And this is because it attacks the very core of what it means to be human.

But as they say, experience is an expensive school, but fools will learn in no other. Often, nothing short of catastrophe is needed to lead men to pause and reflection, and even then, there are no guarantees.

inglor_cz3• 3 years ago

"in vitro/ex vivo methods of reproduction only entrench human alienation"

I absolutely disagree with your view. Infertility is a medical condition much like cataract or myocardial infarction.

In my view, it is profoundly unethical to deny unhealthy people efficient treatment of their disease for philosophical reasons. You are straying dangerously close to the "life unworthy of life" eugenics that is, fortunately, overcome. Trying to ban other people from procreating because your personal opinion on the necessary means is "phew, icky" (and for all the grand words in your comment, you basically say "phew, icky"), sounds like it is you who hasn't taken any lessons from the experience of the collective West.

HeartStrings• 3 years ago

The truly hard part is raising them to be decent human beings.

We have ChatGPT for that.

no-dr-onboard• 3 years ago

"we are summoning things that cannot be easily unsummoned"

coldtea• 3 years ago

"and for no good reason besides that we can and profit"

CatWChainsaw• 3 years ago

The people here don't like it when you imply there are things people just should not do. They think they're going to be singularity'd into gods. If they got that amount of entitlement from a "welfare queen" they'd be offended to death.

germandiago• 3 years ago

Terrifyng to me.

echelon2• 3 years ago

We are biochemical, biomechanical machines already. We just don't teach it.

lo_zamoyski3• 3 years ago

I recommend studying metaphysics. Scientism and its presumed mechanistic metaphysics are not coherent.

paganel• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is just wrong.

Doesn't Israel have any bio-ethics rules in place? If not, they should have and this abomination shouldn't have received the green light.

stanford_labrat2• 3 years ago

Edit: link to my previous comment with a list of papers from the last time a similar thread was posted for those interested.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37018392

This was a busy summer for developmental biology, full disclosure that I am an author on one of these papers and my thesis work is in embryo models/early development. The Hanna group was unfortunately scooped by some unethical behavior but their model is superior to the other one in Nature by Zernicka-Goetz.

areoform2• 3 years ago

Would you be open to giving a talk on the topic?

ed• 3 years ago

Given the spectrum of talk opportunities you might want to provide a little context. There’s a big difference between eg “my twitter space” and Ted.

pvg• 3 years ago

Just link your old comment next time since sometimes threads get merged

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

stanford_labrat2• 3 years ago

Thank you I wasn't aware, appreciate it.

Metacelsus• 3 years ago

I agree, Zernicka-Goetz made a lot of hype at ISSCR but the Hanna lab's system is better.

formvoltron• 3 years ago

Would this allow them to study the rejuvenation events that occur during embryogenesis? I'm talking about the epigenetic resets that occur at some point after egg & sperm unit.

Human embryo models grown from stem cells

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