ABOVE: A human blastoid with nuclei labeled in blue, cell membranes in red, and cell junctions in green
COURTESY JUN WU LAB, UT SOUTHWESTERN
To better understand the earliest stages of human growth, researchers can examine donated embryos or human embryonic stem cells, both of which are in limited supply, or address their questions with animal models. In two studies published in Nature today (March 17), the authors introduce a complementary option: the human blastoid, a blastocyst-like, three-dimensional model system that recapitulates many of the events in the first 10 days of human development—and doesn’t require any starting material from a human embryo.
These papers “are great news,” says Marta Shahbazi, a developmental biologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in England who was not involved in the work. “Studying human development is quite challenging because . . . it’s very difficult to access human embryos, so developing ...
