Implantation barrier overcome

Stem cell biologist Jane Rossant provides an excellent explanation of efforts and publications by Shahbazi et al. (2016) and Deglincerti et al. (2016) to culture self-organizing human embryos in vitro. Rossant attributes their achievements mainly to “an improved culture medium and a better substrate for embryo attachment” (2016:182). Prior to the new developments, the period beyond one week of human embryonic development had been a blackbox, since at this point the embryo would have to be implanted. The new methods show that human early embryo development is quite different from mouse embryo development. Rossant does note some shortcomings in the studies. For example, these studies were conducted on two-dimensional surfaces, whereas a three-dimensional approach would better reflect normal embryo development.