Chinese and U.S. scientists create “human-monkey embryos” half-human, half-monkey threatens to raise ethical controversy

Crab-eating monkeys.

The international authoritative academic journal “Cell” (CELL) recently published a research result of organ transplantation in collaboration with Chinese and American scientists, in which scientists successfully created a chimeric embryo with a high survival rate, “human-monkey embryo”, which survived for a maximum of 20 days in vitro, but did not continue to breed as a fetus. Regarding the ethical controversy of creating “half-human, half-monkey”, Tan Tao, a professor of biology at Kunming Institute of Technology, said that the team has no plans to transfer the embryos.

The chimeric embryo technology is mainly used to solve the problem of organ transplantation shortage. Chimeric embryo technology allows organisms to “grow” human organs, and such organs may cause far fewer rejection reactions when transplanted than if normal animal organs were used directly.

The “human-monkey embryo” study involves injecting human pluripotent stem cells into in vitro cultured crab-eating monkey embryos. Theoretically, pluripotent stem cells have the same differentiation potential as embryonic stem cells and are capable of differentiating into all tissues and organs. The research group injected 25 human pluripotent stem cells into each in vitro fertilized crab monkey embryo at day 6 of development.

It was found that 1 day after injection, human cells appeared in all 132 embryos. By day 10 of development, 111 embryos were still able to grow normally. However, the survival rate of the “human-monkey embryos” decreased over time and began to decrease sharply by day 15. By day 19, only 3 embryos survived. Finally, on day 20, all embryos died.

In addition to the improved survival rate of crab-eating monkey embryos in this study, the study also found that human cells accounted for 2% to 7% of human-monkey embryos, and were found in both the epiblast and hypoblast.

The report pointed out that in the past, foreign research has tried to create “human-pig embryos” and “human-sheep embryos”, but the results were not very satisfactory. If you continue to culture or even transplant “human-monkey embryos” so that they can eventually be “born”, the organs in the organism, there may be human cells.

Regarding the ethical controversy of creating “half-human, half-monkey”, Tan Tao, the first author of the paper and a professor of biology at Kunming University of Technology, said that the research was conducted in accordance with national regulations in China and the United States, and that China does not prohibit experiments with chimeric embryos, but only requires ethical approval. The team currently has no plans to transfer embryos, and whether they will continue to grow embryos in the future will require extensive follow-up discussions and ethical arguments.