Scientists create "mini placenta" organoids in a laboratory dish

LONDON: British scientists have succeeded in creating tiny human placenta organoids that they believe will transform scientific understanding of reproductive disorders such as pre-eclampsia and miscarriage.

Organoids – miniature functional cell models from the earliest stages of the human placenta – will also allow researchers to explore the elements that make a pregnancy healthy and how certain diseases can pass from one to the next. mother to a developing baby.

The human placenta provides all the oxygen and nutrients essential for the growth of the fetus. If it does not develop properly, the pregnancy may fail and end in stillbirth or miscarriage, or a baby may be born with developmental problems.

Ashley Moffett, a professor in the Department of Pathology, Physiology, Development and Neuroscience at Cambridge University, who co-directed the work, explained that if the placenta is absolutely essential to support a baby growing up at the mother's Researchers know relatively little about this because of a lack of good experimental models.

"This is the first organ that is growing, but it is also the least well understood," she told reporters at a press briefing.

The field of organoid science has developed in recent years. Research teams have made every effort to transform the mini-brains through the mini-livers through the mini-lungs and use them to better understand human biology and diseases.

DECADES OF RESEARCH

The Cambridge team, whose latest work was published in the journal Nature, began its efforts to develop human placental cells more than 30 years ago, while Moffett and his colleagues studied cell events in the first few weeks of pregnancy.

The team gradually developed ways to isolate and characterize placental cells and finally found the right combination of harvested cells and an organoid culture system allowing the generation of mini placenta models.

"We have been trying to do this for years," said Moffett.

Graham Burton, who also worked on this research, said the success of the mini-placenta should also highlight other misunderstood aspects of the placenta, uterine and fetal relationship. These include how the placenta prevents certain infections of the mother's blood from being transmitted to the baby, without stopping others, such as the Zika virus, for example.

Organoids can also be used to screen for drugs that can be used in early pregnancy and to better understand how chromosomal abnormalities can interfere with normal development.

Vivian Li, a specialist at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain, did not participate in this work, saying it was an "exciting" step.

"These mini placentas are small-scale and certainly can not be used to make babies in a dish, but the ability to grow them in this dish has opened the door to more complex studies," she said. . statement sent by email.

(Report by Kate Kelland, edited by Gareth Jones)