![]() ![]() And even if it did, argued Ross, growing human organs in monkeys doesn’t make sense because they take so long to develop. The problem? It begs the question of whether the idea worked. The chimera embryos are basically balls of cells, and Núñez does not plan on bringing these hybrids to full term. To circumvent immediate backlash, the team drew the line at 14 days of gestation, which is before human embryos can develop a central nervous system. Estrella Núñez at the Murcia Catholic University (UCAM) in Spain confirmed that they used a similar approach to insert human stem cells into monkey embryos deprived of genes that guide organ formation.Īccording to Núñez, the results are “very promising,” but she declined to speak more until the study finds a home in a prominent scientific journal. Speaking to El Pa í s, Izpisúa Belmonte’s collaborator Dr. You can almost hear the team’s reasoning for moving on to monkeys, which are genetically much closer to us and in theory might be able to better tolerate human cells. The evolutionary chasm between pigs and humans may be too far to efficiently cross. Although the human-pig embryos survived, the transplant rate was extremely low: about 1 in 100,000 cells turned out to be human. The team then introduced human stem cells into pig embryos, which were transplanted into surrogate mother pigs to develop for up to a month. They then repopulated this “gap” with rat stem cells, which-under the guidance of their own genes-flourished into corresponding organs that kept the hybrid animals alive past adulthood. First, the team used CRISPR on mouse embryo precursors to snip away genes that direct cells to grow into a pancreas, heart, or eyes. Pablo Ross at UC Davis, Izpisúa Belmonte built on previous work that grew functional mice pancreas in rats. Because pigs breed much faster and already grace our plates as food, the idea of harvesting human organs from these surrogates-though still uncomfortable-seems far less radical. ![]() His initial focus was to create a human hybrid with pigs, which have organs remarkably similar in size to our own. Izpisúa Belmonte’s pursuit of a chimera first came to fruition in 2017. The other goal is to understand the genes that shape our brain in evolution and development-ones that bestow us with our extraordinary intelligence, and ones that screw up neural wiring in neuropsychiatric disorders when they go wrong. ![]() Izpisúa Belmonte, for example, hopes to grow fully-functional human organs inside animals, which could in theory make transplantable organ shortage a thing of the past. But creepiness aside, scientists do have two reasons for wading into these uncomfortable waters. The morality and ethics of growing human-animal hybrids are far from clear. If you’re feeling icked out, you’re not alone. And despite efforts to revamp its reputation in biomedical research ethics, China does have slacker rules in primate research compared to Western countries. Earlier in April, a team from southern China came under international fire for sticking extra copies of human “intelligence-related” genes into macaque monkeys. “It makes you wonder, if their reason for choosing to do this in a Chinese laboratory is because of our high-tech experimental setups, or because of loopholes in our laws?” lamented one anonymous commentator on China’s popular social media app, WeChat. The news did not sit well with Chinese scientists, who are still recovering from the CRISPR baby scandal. Second, according to El País, Izpisúa Belmonte may have collaborated with monkey researchers in China to circumvent legal issues in the US and Spain, where research with primates is heavily regulated. ![]() His other fascination? Human-animal chimeras, in which animal embryos are injected with human cells and further developed inside a surrogate animal’s body. Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte, a Spanish-born stem cell biologist at the Salk Institute in California known for his breakthroughs in anti-aging research. First, its protagonist is the highly-respected Dr. The story, first reported by the Spanish newspaper El País, has all the ingredients of a bombshell. Last week, news broke that a prominent stem cell researcher is making human-monkey chimeras in a secretive lab in China. ![]()
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