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Embryo research: the 14-day limit in question

2021-05-28T02:36:38.239Z


The 14-day time limit for culturing human embryos in vitro must be extended to advance knowledge, recommend ...


The 14-day time limit for culturing human embryos in vitro must be extended to advance knowledge, experts on Wednesday recommend, who are setting an international scientific framework for this type of research.

To read also: Sorting of embryos: the DPI-A, this controversial measure of the bioethics law

In some countries, this research is not framed by law, and even when it is, there is no international legislative harmonization.

In addition to their local laws, researchers around the world therefore refer to the recommendations of the International Society for Research on Stem Cells (ISSCR).

Their updated version was released on Wednesday, for the first time since 2016.

These highly technical recommendations cover a broad spectrum of research with serious ethical implications, from the implantation of human cells in animal organisms to genome editing, including the creation of organs from stem cells.

An area that sometimes borders on science fiction and causes fear among the general public.

Among the proposed changes, "the most important is perhaps the relaxation of the 14-day rule, the limit for cultivating intact human embryos in the laboratory", explains the head of the group of 45 scientists behind these recommendations. , the Englishman Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Francis Crick Institute, in London.

"Black Box"

This expert panel does not propose a new limit, but recommends that the 14 days can be exceeded subject to solid scientific reasons and public consultation in the country where the research concerned takes place.

The limit of 14 days after fertilization, at the end of which the embryos must be destroyed, "appears in the law of several dozen countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia," recalls Robin Lovell-Badge in a comment published by the medical journal Nature. In France, the limit is not set by law, but in practice, it is set at seven days. The government wishes to officially extend it to 14 days as part of the bioethics law currently being examined in parliament.

For the scientists at the ISSRC, however, this barrier is already obsolete.

“When this limit was proposed almost 40 years ago, no one was able to grow human embryos beyond 5 days or so.

But today, it prevents us from studying a crucial period (in the development of the embryo), between 14 and 28 days, ”argues Robin Lovell-Badge.

To read also: Eugenics, surrogacy, "shared motherhood", chimeric embryos… These bioethical dilemmas likely to ignite the debate

According to him, the limit of 14 days precedes just "the appearance of the first signs of formation of the central nervous system".

However, "we know very little about what happens in the embryo" during the period following the 14 days, considered as "the black box" of human development.

Miscarriages

“From an ethical point of view, we can consider that we need to better understand this period of human development, given its importance,” continues Robin Lovell-Badge, according to whom this could help advance knowledge about miscarriages and physical malformations. fetuses.

This type of research has made significant progress in recent years.

In March, two teams of researchers announced that they had generated human embryonic structures at an early stage, hoping to learn more about the early stages of development.

These experimental structures correspond to the blastocysts, the first stage of the embryo, approximately five days after the fertilization of the egg by a sperm.

Called "blastoids", these models, which cannot continue their development like natural embryos, are not subject to the 14-day rule. But this limit prevents us from verifying that what happens in these experimental models is consistent with what happens in real embryos, the researchers argue.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2021-05-28

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