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Thread: Scientists grow two-week-old human embryos in lab

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    Lightbulb Scientists grow two-week-old human embryos in lab

    Scientists grow two-week-old human embryos in lab...

    For first time, scientists grow two-week-old human embryos in lab
    May 4, 2016 - Scientists have for the first time grown human embryos outside of the mother for almost two full weeks into development, giving unique insight into what they say is the most mysterious stage of early human life.
    Scientists had previously only been able to study human embryos as a culture in a lab dish until the seventh day of development when they had to implant them into the mother's uterus to survive and develop further. But using a culture method previously tested to grow mouse embryos outside of a mother, the teams were able to conduct almost hour by hour observations of human embryo development to see how they develop and organize themselves up to day 13. "This it the most enigmatic and mysterious stage of human development," said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a University of Cambridge professor who co-led the work. "It is a time when the basic body shape is determined."

    The work, covered in two studies published on Wednesday in the journal Nature and Nature Cell Biology, showed how the cells that will eventually form the human body self-organize into the basic structure of a post-implantation human embryo. "Embryo development is an extremely complex process and while our system may not be able to fully reproduce every aspect of this process, it has allowed us to reveal a remarkable self-organizing capacity ... that was previously unknown," said Marta Shahbazi, a researcher at Britain's University of Cambridge who was part of the research teams. Robin Lovell-Badge, an expert in stem cells at Britain's Francis Crick Institute who was not directly involved in this work, said it provided "a first glimpse" of how the early human embryo develops at the point when it would usually implant in the womb lining, becoming invisible and impossible to study.

    14-DAY LIMIT

    As well as advancing human biology expertise, the knowledge gained from studying these developments should help to improve in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments and further progress in the field of regenerative medicine, the researchers said. But the research also raises the issue of an international law banning scientists from developing human embryos beyond 14 days, and suggests this limit may have to be reviewed. Zernicka-Goetz, who spoke to reporters in London, said a wealth of new information could be discovered if human embryos could be grown in a lab dish for just a few days more. "Longer cultures could provide absolutely critical information for basic human biology," she said. "But this would of course raise the next question - of where we should put the next limit."

    Sarah Norcross, director of the Progress Educational Trust, a charity which campaigns for people affected by infertility and genetic conditions, agreed that the research raised questions around the 14-day limit and said the international scientific community should "decide whether it is necessary and desirable" to extend it, and if so, by how much. "A public discussion of the rights and wrongs of this would need to follow before any change in law could be contemplated," she told Reuters.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-tim...71.html?ref=gs

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    I imagine that in secret some scientist(s) are keeping them a lot longer.
    ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ


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    Yes. Hard to imagine a government like China has would care anything about ethics.


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    Make me Two (2) Misty Copeland's



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    Quote Originally Posted by Cigar View Post
    Make me Two (2) Misty Copeland's

    Afraid you might break one?

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    Red face

    Uh-oh, Oops!...

    Switched embryos and wrong sperm: IVF mix-ups lead to babies born with ‘unintended parentage’
    Sunday 31st July, 2016 - Accidentally switched embryos. Wrong sperm. The burgeoning field of assisted procreation can involve serious medical blunders, experts are warning, including “misdirected” embryos — embryos that end up in the wrong woman’s body.
    The American Society of Reproductive Medicine, in a newly published article, says fertility clinics have an ethical obligation to immediately disclose mistakes that could result in babies born with a “different genetic parentage than intended.” That could include inseminating a woman with the wrong sperm, combining the wrong sperm with the wrong eggs or transferring the wrong embryos to the wrong uterus — devastating errors that can result in babies being born to couples that were intended for someone else, the society’s ethics committee writes in the latest edition of the journal, Fertility and Sterility.


    A container holding racks of frozen oocytes, or immature egg cells, are shown being pulled up from a liquid nitrogen storage tank at the NYU Fertility Center in New York

    Such calamities, experts insist, are rare, and while the body representing Canada’s largely for-profit fertility industry says it is unaware of any cases of “misdirected” embryos here, there has been a smattering of reports of IVF mix-ups in the U.S. and elsewhere that have led to emotionally wrought battles to determine legal parentage and custody. In 1999, a New York State woman of Italian descent gave birth to twin boys — one white, the other black. The woman had undergone an embryo transfer at a Manhattan fertility clinic the same day a black couple were also undergoing IVF. But an embryo from the black woman ended up in the white woman, reportedly because the pipette hadn’t been properly flushed between transfers. Only the white woman became pregnant. “The couples initially agreed to a shared custody agreement, but ended up in a custody dispute,” said Toronto fertility lawyer Sherry Levitan. “The genetic parents won.”

    Levitan was involved in a case about 15 years ago involving a Toronto-area couple. An embryo was created using a donor egg and what was supposed to be sperm from the male partner. A surrogate carried the embryo. As part of a court application to obtain a Declaration of Parentage, DNA testing was performed. “The DNA testing came back, and nobody was related to the child,” Levitan said. “They ran (the test) again. It wasn’t a DNA mistake; it was clearly a laboratory mix-up. We don’t know if it was an embryo mix-up or a sperm mix-up.” The parents chose not to sue for negligence, because they didn’t want to risk losing the child.


    In 2013, Ottawa’s Dr. Norman Barwin, a once-acclaimed fertility doctor and a past president of Planned Parenthood Canada was banned from practicing for two months by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario disciplinary panel after admitting to artificially inseminating three women with the wrong semen over a two-decade period. The children are likely now in their 20s. No one knows how often semen or embryo mishaps may have occurred in Canada. Levitan said that while DNA tests are always done in surrogacy cases, they aren’t typically performed for routine IVF. “In other words, most people never check to make sure that the baby they deliver is the baby that they expect.”

    Don’t just let a nurse read it out to you — look at it.

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    Lightbulb

    New hope for infertile women...

    Mouse implanted with ovaries made by 3D printer gives birth, offering new hope for infertile women
    Thursday 18th May, 2017 — Infertile women have been offered new hope after scientists created ovaries on a 3D printer and used them to produce healthy offspring.
    For the first time ever, U.S. researchers printed an artificial ovary and implanted it in a mouse, which went on to produce eggs, mate successfully, and give birth to healthy pups. Although the procedure has only been tested on animals so far, the long- term aim is to help restore fertility and hormone production in women who have undergone chemotherapy or who suffer from other infertility issues, such as polycystic ovaries. “The real breakthrough here is we’re building a real ovarian prosthesis and the goal of this project is to be able to restore fertility to young cancer patients who have been sterilized by their cancer treatment,” said Dr Teresa Woodruff, reproductive scientist director at the Women’s Health Research Institute, Northwestern University, Illinois. “Right now, we’re able to do that with young mice and the goal ultimately is to provide this to (human) patients.

    The prosthetic ovaries, called scaffolds by scientists, were printed using liquid gelatin made from broken-down collagen, a natural material which is found in ligaments, tendons, muscles, bones and skin, researchers reported in the journal Nature Communications. The ovary walls were engineered to have a lattice-like porous structure, so they could interact with body tissues and trigger the production of eggs, while also being strong enough to cope with implantation. The sac-like structure also allows room for the egg cells to mature and ovulate and for blood vessels to form within the implant, enabling the hormones to circulate and trigger lactation after giving birth.


    The procedure has only been tested on animals so far, but the long- term aim is to help restore fertility and hormone production in women who have undergone chemotherapy or who suffer from other infertility issues

    Dr Monica Laronda, co-lead author of the research, said: “What happens with some of our cancer patients is that their ovaries don’t function at a high enough level and they need to use hormone replacement therapies in order to trigger puberty. “Our technician removed the ovary of the mouse, replaced it with our scaffold, stitched it all back up and we mated some of those animals and we were able to get live birth. The team is now working on enlarging the scaffold so that it could be in tested on larger animals, and eventually humans.”

    Martin Ledwick, the head cancer information nurse at Cancer Research UK, said: “Fertility preservation is an important issue for many patients whose treatment is likely to leave them infertile. It’s good to see research into new ways that might maintain fertility. But so far this work has only been done in mice so it’s not yet clear whether it might be useful for people in the future.”

    http://news.nationalpost.com/health/...-+Top+Stories)
    See also:

    ‘Astonishing’ hope for infertile women after cancer drug found to make ovaries produce new eggs
    December 5, 2016 – Infertile women have been offered new hope after scientists found that a common cancer drug triggers the development of new eggs, an outcome previously thought to be impossible.
    In a discovery hailed as “astonishing,” researchers at the University of Edinburgh proved that it is possible to reverse the clock and coax the ovaries back into a pre-pubescent state where they begin to produce new eggs. Women are born with all their eggs, which is why conceiving grows harder with age, as the eggs become old and damaged before running out entirely. But scientists noticed that women who had undergone chemotherapy for Hodgkin Lymphoma with a drug combination known as ABVD had up to 10 times the number of eggs as healthy women. Far from damaging the chance of having a baby, the cancer drugs actually have improved their fertility.

    The researchers speculate that the shock of chemotherapy may trigger stem cells in the ovaries into producing new follicles, the hair-like structures that each produce a single egg. Lead researcher Evelyn Telfer of the University of Edinburgh’s school of biological sciences, said: “We were astonished when we saw what had happened to the tissue. It looked like pre-pubescent tissue with a high density of follicles and clustering that you don’t normally see in an adult. “We knew that ABVD does not have a sterilizing effect like some cancer drugs can, but to find new eggs being made, in such huge numbers – that was very surprising to see.”


    Women who had undergone chemotherapy with *ABVD had up to 10 times the number of eggs as healthy women.

    Telfer said the outcome of the study may prove to be “significant and far-reaching,” adding that “it is significant that the same effect was seen in all of the women on ABVD”. Scientists analyzed samples of ovarian tissue donated by 14 women who had undergone chemotherapy, alongside tissue from 12 healthy women. They found that the tissue from eight of the cancer patients treated with ABVD had between four and 10 times more eggs compared with tissue from women who had received a different chemotherapy, or healthy women of a similar age. The ovarian tissue was in healthy condition, appearing similar to tissue from young women’s ovaries.

    Although the eggs are in an immature state, the scientists are trying to discover how they were created, then work out a way to bring them to maturity. It is unclear if the eggs in their current form would be functional. Charles Kingsland, a fertility expert at Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “This is a very small but extremely interesting study. It’s very early days but may give an insight as to how the ovary can make new eggs, which previously we thought was impossible.” The study was published in the journal Human Reproduction, and supported by the Medical Research Council.

    http://news.nationalpost.com/health/...-grow-new-eggs
    Related:

    Wombs will be grown for infertile women from their own stem cells in 10 years, specialist says
    June 22, 2016 - Infertile women could be implanted with new wombs grown from their own stem cells within 10 years, the doctor who achieved the first uterus transplant has predicted.
    Professor Mats Brannstrom carried out the first womb transplant in 2014, which allowed a Swedish woman to give birth to a healthy baby boy. He has since undertaken nine more procedures, resulting in a total of five births. But he told a conference in Birmingham the future lies in bio-engineering, which lessens risk factors. At present, women undergoing the operation must be given strong immunosuppressant drugs to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new womb, which is donated by a family member or close friend. But if a new womb could be grown from their own stem cells no drugs would be needed and there would be fewer complications.


    The doctor has performed several successful womb transplants

    Brannstrom told delegates that womb “patches” had already been successfully grown in rats from stem cells and the procedure could be perfected for humans within 10 or 15 years. “The concept is you create from stem cells of the recipient and transplant that into the recipient,” he told the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists world congress. “These may be the future, but we’ll of course need a lot of research,” he said, referring to a time frame of “not in five years, but perhaps in 10-15 years.”

    Womb transplants help women suffering from Absolute Uterine Factor Infertility (AUFI), which occurs when a faulty or absent uterus prevents an embryo from implanting. AUFI affects around 12,000 women in Britain. Richard Smith, who leads the U.K. Uterine Transplant Research Programme, lauded Brannstom’s “very important proof of concept”, and said “the success of the Swedish team shows that at least some of these women will be able to bear their own child where before there was no hope.”

    http://news.nationalpost.com/health/...pecialist-says

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