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Mini-placentas grown in the lab can mimic early pregnancy & nbsp | & nbspPhoto Credit: & nbspThinkstock
London: Scientists have created mini artificial placentas in the laboratory after almost three decades of research, offering hope to combat miscarriages, stillbirths and premature births, as well as transforming research into pregnancy.
The new "mini placentas" are a cellular model of the early stages of the placenta. They can help to better understand the mysteries that surround the relationships between the placenta, the uterus and the fetus. They also allow research to prevent certain infections from pbading from the mother's blood to the blood. fetus as well as on the Zika virus.
"These" mini placentas "built on decades of research will play an important role in helping us investigate events that occurred during the early stages of pregnancy while having profound consequences on the health of the mother and her offspring," explained Professor Graham Burton of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
"The placenta provides all the oxygen and nutrients essential for the growth of the fetus.If it does not grow properly, the pregnancy can unfortunately end with a low birth weight baby or even a stillbirth, "he added. For the new study, published in the journal Nature, the team developed organoids, often called "mini-organs," using villous cells – tiny structures resembling fronds – extracted from placental tissues.
These trophoblast organoids are able to survive in the long term, are genetically stable and organize into villous structures that secrete proteins and essential hormones that would affect the mother's metabolism during pregnancy.
Further badysis has shown that organoids are very similar to normal first-trimester placentas and are able to register a positive response to an over-the-counter pregnancy test.
In addition, these organoids can also be used to check the safety of drugs to be used in early pregnancy, to understand how chromosomal abnormalities can disrupt normal development, and possibly even to provide stem cell therapies for non-pregnant pregnancies. successful.
The placenta is absolutely essential to support the baby growing up inside the mother. When it does not work properly, it can result in serious problems, from pre-eclampsia to miscarriage, with immediate consequences for the entire life of the mother and the child.
The efforts to culture human placental cells began more than 30 years ago, while Cambridge scientists were studying cell events in the first weeks of pregnancy.
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