But none of this happens inside the body. These images were taken in a Beijing laboratory inside a microfluidic chip while scientists observed what was happening.
With permission from the RESEARCHERS
In three papers published this week by Cell Press, scientists report what they call the most accurate attempts to mimic the first moments of pregnancy in the laboratory. They took human embryos from IVF centers and allowed them to fuse with “organoids” made up of endometrial cells that form the lining of the uterus.
The reports – two from China and a third a collaboration between researchers in the UK, Spain and the US – show how scientists are using engineered tissue to better understand early pregnancy and potentially improve IVF outcomes.
“You have an embryo and an endometrial organelle together,” says Jun Wu, a biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas who contributed to both Chinese reports. “That’s the overarching message of all three articles.”
According to the documents, these 3D combinations represent the most complete recreation of the first days of pregnancy and could be useful for studying why IVF methods often fail.
In each case, the experiments were stopped when the embryos were two weeks old, or even earlier. This is due to legal and ethical rules that generally prohibit scientists from going further than 14 days.
In your basic IVF procedure, an egg is fertilized in a laboratory and allowed to develop into a spherical embryo called a blastocyst, a process that takes several days. This blastocyst is then placed in the patient's uterus in the hope that it will implant there and eventually become a baby.
With permission from the RESEARCHERS
But this is a common failure point. Many patients find out that their IVF procedure did not work because the embryo never implanted.
