Artificial 'embryo' created for first time in historic breakthrough

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “It has anatomically correct regions that develop in the right place and at the right time.” Fellow researcher Sarah Harrison, a PhD student, said using human stem cells to create a similar structure in the lab was “something certainly to explore”. “You just need the right mix of things and there’s a bit of self-organisation going on.” Further research could be carried out to discover “what are the magic factors that really allow such a process, the arrangement of these cells, in what is effectively a mix of things?” Asked if the same technique could be used to create something close to a human embryo, she said: “Without a doubt it could be done … everything is possible eventually. “We think that it will be possible to mimic a lot of the developmental events occurring before 14 days using human embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells using a similar approach to our technique using mouse stem cells,” Professor Zernicka-Goetz said. Knowing how development normally occurs will allow us to understand why it so often goes wrong.” Dr Dusko Ilic, a reader in stem cell science at King’s College London, said the research was “another masterpiece of recreating in vitro the earliest steps of embryo development coming from the Zernicka-Goetz lab”.