Abstract:
Understanding the processes and mechanisms underlying early human embryo development has become an increasingly active and important area of research. It has potential for insights into important clinical issues such as early pregnancy loss, origins of congenital anomalies and developmental origins of adult disease, as well as fundamental insights into human biology. Improved culture systems for preimplantation embryos, combined with the new tools of single cell genomics and live imaging, are providing new insights into the similarities and differences between human and mouse development. However, access to human embryo material is still restricted and extended culture of early embryos has regulatory and ethical concerns. Stem cell-derived models of different phases of human development can potentially overcome these limitations and provide a scalable source of material to explore the early postimplantation stages of human development. To date, such models are clearly incomplete replicas of normal development but future technological improvements can be envisaged. The ethical and regulatory environment for such studies remains to be fully resolved.
摘要:
了解人类早期胚胎发育的过程和机制已成为一个日益活跃和重要的研究领域。它有可能深入了解重要的临床问题,如早期妊娠丢失,先天性异常的起源和成人疾病的发育起源,以及对人类生物学的基本见解。改良植入前胚胎的培养系统,结合单细胞基因组学和实时成像的新工具,正在为人类和小鼠发育之间的异同提供新的见解。然而,人类胚胎材料的获取仍然受到限制,早期胚胎的扩展培养存在监管和伦理问题。人类发育不同阶段的干细胞衍生模型可以潜在地克服这些限制,并提供可扩展的材料来源,以探索人类发育的早期植入后阶段。迄今为止,这些模型显然是正常发展的不完整副本,但可以设想未来的技术改进。此类研究的道德和监管环境仍有待完全解决。