Scientists are exploring ways to mimic the origins of human life without two fundamental components: sperm and egg. They are coaxing clusters of stem cells – programmable cells that can transform into ...

In primates, ESCs differ from rodent ESCs in their differentiation potential. Human naïve ESCs can be induced to form blastoids as their ability to form the trophoblast lineage. Moreover, integrated ...

LaBonne is president of the Society for Developmental Biology and the Erastus Otis Haven professor of molecular biosciences at Northwestern University. Imagine a world without lifesaving medicines, ...

In recent months, the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health have announced new initiatives to reduce and replace animal testing in biomedical research. Central to these ...

Every year, more than 100 million animals are used globally in biomedical research, yet over 90% of drugs that appear effective in animal trials fail during human clinical testing. 1 This staggering ...

University of Cambridge scientists have used human stem cells to create three-dimensional embryo-like structures that replicate certain aspects of very early human development—including the production ...

As a researcher, I still remember the discomfort I felt every time I had to sacrifice laboratory animals for an experiment. For decades, animals like mice, rats and pigs have been essential tools in ...

The development of stem-cell-derived models of mammalian embryogenesis has provided invaluable tools for investigating embryo development. However, constructing embryo models that can continuously ...

Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange ...

The team observed the emergence of the three-dimensional embryo-like structures under a microscope in the lab. These started producing blood (seen here in red) after around two weeks of development - ...