The rapid advances in human biology have also given rise to many moral and ethical issues that are up for debate. A new experiment shows that scientists have successfully combined human cells with macaque embryos, which could be used for future biological experiments or organ transplants.
The U.S.-China scientific team injected human stem cells into macaque embryos and observed their growth for 20 days, according to a comprehensive foreign media report. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a geneticist at the Shaker Institute for Biological Studies (SIBS) in California, who led the team, said the research could address the shortage of transplantable organs and further research on early human growth, disease formation and aging.
Belmonte said the research, published in the scientific journal “Cell” on the 15th, meets modern ethical and legal standards. “Ultimately we will be able to use these studies to understand and improve human health.”
Mixing embryos from two different species is called “chimerism,” and there has been past experience with human cells implanted in sheep and pigs, with Belmonte having helped create the first human-pig hybrid in 2017. Although the experimental team destroyed the embryos on day 20, it still raised concerns in the scientific community and called for a public debate to define the ethical boundaries of creating chimeras containing human cells.
Belmonte stressed that the team did not intend to implant any mixed species embryos into the mimosas; its goal was to further understand how cells of different species interact during early embryonic growth. But Julian Savulescu, a professor at Oxford University, believes that the experiment is akin to opening Pandora’s box, and that it is only a matter of time before human-nonhuman chimeras are successfully developed.
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