By Ku Leuven
From left to right: Bradley Balaton, Thi Xuan Ai Pham, Amitesh Panda, Vincent Pasque.
Professor Vincent Pasque and his team at KU Leuven have generated a new type of human cell in the lab using stem cells. The cells closely resemble their natural counterparts in early human embryos. As a result, researchers can now better study what happens just after an embryo implants in the womb. The findings were published in Cell Stem Cell.
From left to right: Bradley Balaton,
When all goes well, a human embryo implants in the womb about seven days after fertilisation. At that point, the embryo becomes inaccessible for research due to technical and ethical limitations. That is why scientists have already developed stem cell models for various types of embryonic and extraembryonic cells to study human development in a dish.