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“We have gathered a lot of knowledge on animal models … but that knowledge doesn’t always translate to humans because we are different from other animals,” Izpisua Belmonte said. “About 20 years ago, the scientific community was able to get some of these cells from these early embryos [known as] totipotency cells that can generate the 250 cell types that a human is composed of. … We were able to take them out of a human embryo, put them in a petri dish and maintain them. In these 20 years, we have taken these cells and are trying to mimic what nature will do: Inside the mother, these cells will start to form all the tissues and organs, so we are trying to mimic that process in a petri dish.”
Salk scientists implant human cells in monkey embryos as a step toward easing future transplants
Salk Institute for Biological Studies professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte says engineering human and/or monkey cells to communicate with pig cells and eventually use them to help grow organs compatible with humans is “a far way away.”
(Courtesy of Salk Institute for Biological Studies )
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To better understand how human cells communicate with those from other animals and potentially ease the process of cultivating tissue and organs for human transplantation, scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla have taken the next step in research of chimeras organisms that contain cells from two or more species.
In a breakthrough new study, scientists have created human-monkey chimera embryos for the first time. These chimeras pave the way for more accurate models of human biology and disease, which could open up a range of new medical benefits. But of course they also raise some complicated ethical concerns.
A chimera is, put simply, an organism that contains cells from more than one individual. It can occur naturally during development, such as when non-identical twins merge early on, or it can be an artificial process – technically, organ transplants create chimeras.
But it doesn’t necessarily need to be cells from the same species. Scientists have been experimenting with interspecies chimeras for decades, merging similar animals like mice and rats, and sheep and goats. And in the new study, researchers from the Salk Institute and Kunming University of Science and Technology successfully created chimeras of humans and monkeys.
Scientists Create Monkey-Human Embryos
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, April 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) Researchers have successfully introduced human stem cells into monkey embryos in the lab, creating short-lived hybrid organisms that could prove an important step in growing human transplant organs from livestock or creating better animal models for studying human disease.
The human/monkey chimeras organisms that contain cells from two or more species survived for up to 20 days in petri dishes, a team of Chinese and U.S. researchers reported.
This sort of research raises ethical concerns that can make a person queasy, said Nita Farahany, founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society in Durham, N.C. She is also co-author of an editorial accompanying the April 15 report in the journal Cell.
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