With the arrival of 3D printed artificial uterus, women will not have to conceive themselves in the future?

Premature babies are newborns whose gestational age is less than 37 weeks. In recent years, the incidence of premature babies in China has been on the rise, about 7%. The survival rate of premature babies is related to gestational age. The younger the gestational age, the lighter the weight and the higher the mortality rate. The mortality rate of infants weighing less than 1500 grams at birth accounts for about 50% of the total neonatal deaths, and the possibility of accompanying sequelae is relatively high.How to improve the survival rate of premature infants and reduce complications is a problem that needs to be solved urgently. In addition, for women suffering from uterine disorders, pregnancy and childbirth have become a luxury. If the embryo can develop in vitro by simulating the environment in the uterus, the above two problems will be solved at the same time.Scientists have put forward the idea of an artificial uterus. The artificial uterus simulates the conditions of mammalian uterus and oviparous animal eggs, so that fertilized eggs can develop in an artificial environment, so as to get rid of the need for the mother’s body. Some progress has been made so far. How far is the application of artificial uterus in the future?

Source: neo.life

Artificial uterus has been realized in sheep

As early as 1923, after Haldane conducted an in-depth discussion of artificial uterus in a lecture held at Cambridge University, scientists from various countries began to study the possibility of embryos growing out of the mother’s body.In 1954, Emmanuel Greenberg designed the artificial uterus device for the first time and applied for a patent. The design includes a water tank for the fetus filled with amniotic fluid, a machine connected to the umbilical cord, blood pump, an artificial kidney and a water heater. This is just a rough idea.

In 1987, Yoshinori Kuwabara, a professor at Juntendo University in Japan, developed an extrauterine fetal incubation system, EUFI (Extrauterine Fetal Incubation System). The extrauterine fetal incubation system has an artificial amniotic fluid environment similar to that of female goats. Based on previous experiments, the researchers successfully extended the culture time to three weeks until the goats reach full term. However, because goat fetuses would pinch or pull out the catheters when they were moving, Kuwana paralyzed them with muscle relaxants, but relaxants prevented the fetuses from breathing normally. When the researchers removed the ventilator four weeks later, the goats were in a hurry for several hours. Death within.

In 2017, the team of Alan Flake from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published an animal experiment on the “artificial uterus” developed in the journal Nature Communications, which successfully developed to mid-term (equivalent to a human pregnancy cycle of 22-24 weeks). ) Premature goat fetuses survived smoothly in the “artificial uterus” for 4 weeks and survived the dangerous period. Flake also successfully bred sheep with a younger gestational age (105 to 108 days) in vitro for 4 weeks (finally stopped due to the restrictions of the animal protocol).

This artificial uterus is exactly made of a special material
biology
The biological bag simulates the uterus of the ewe, which is filled with amniotic fluid, and the mechanical placenta is arranged outside the biological bag.
Blood vessel
Connected to the umbilical cord of premature lambs.
The artificial uterus is connected with a special pipeline, and a fixed amount of amniotic fluid is injected every day to ensure that the premature lambs living in it are suspended in the mother’s uterine environment. Fresh blood containing nutrients and oxygen is continuously transported to the lamb. The lamb’s heart also squeezes the old blood containing carbon dioxide and other metabolites into the machine placenta. The machine placenta renews the blood and then returns it to the lamb.

During the gestation period of the artificial uterus, these premature lambs all developed normally, their blood pressure and other health indicators were stable, and there were no other complications. Some of the lambs born have grown for more than a year, and after various indicators have been tested, the results are no different from those of normal reproduction lambs. If this technology can be applied to humans, it will greatly improve the chances of survival of premature babies.
Our country is also trying to artificial uterus. In December 2020, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University achieved the first successful in vitro breeding of artificial uterus fetus sheep.
surgical
, Obstetrics and ECMO team of the in vitro support center jointly promoted. This research fills the gap of in vitro cultivation in our country.

Artificial uterus to witness the early and complete development of mouse embryos

In March 2021, “Nature” magazine published the latest study of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. The study used “artificial uterus” to successfully breed hundreds of small mice, and all the organ development indicators of the mice were normal.

What is “excellent” about this research?

The aforementioned research is limited to early embryo division and short-term development in a laboratory environment, or the fetus is removed from the uterus after organ formation and continues to grow in the laboratory. The focus of this research is on “the early and complete development of the embryo” to witness how it develops into a living body.The research team extracted embryos from mother mice that had been gestated for only 7.5 days, differentiated into inner cell masses, and formed ectoderm and primitive endoderm. At this time, the embryo consisted of only 250 cells. The embryo is placed in the environment of an “artificial uterus”, which contains parts such as an incubator, nutrients and a ventilation system. The seemingly simple conception and operation took 7 years from concept to successful operation.

The glass bottle in the runner in Figure b is the “uterus” that breeds mouse embryos. It is filled with a special liquid that nourishes embryonic cells, which provides essential nutrients, hormones and sugars for embryonic development. The rotation of the wheel can prevent the embryo from attaching to the side of the glass bottle, preventing the embryo from deforming or stopping its development.

Figure c shows that the mouse embryo cultured in the “artificial uterus” grows from a cell ball into a mouse fetus, all organs appear, the heart is beating, and the brain is fully developed.

This technology also opens a new door for the study of embryonic development. This technology can avoid the limitations of imaging inside the uterus, allowing researchers to directly observe the embryonic development process, or can be applied to research such as fertilized egg transplantation and abortion.

3D printingIs the uterus feasible?

The above-mentioned artificial uterus can simulate the environment in the uterus, but it is a biological bag after all. Can a real tissue-type artificial uterus be realized?

It is completely different from the previous model of relying on machinery. In 2001, Professor Liu Hongqing from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Cornell University reconstructed the organ “uterus” outside the body.

The fertilized human egg and endometrial cells are first co-cultured, so that the endometrial cells grow in the collagen matrix first, so that the cells form a multilayer embolism similar to the endometrial tissue, and finally build a collagen and cartilage A uterine-shaped stent that can be biologically decomposed, which is made of vitamins, is then “seeded” endometrial cells on it. When stabilized, the material used as the stent is decomposed to construct a three-dimensional “artificial uterus.”
Because the US law stipulates that the embryos of IVF can not develop more than 14 days, the final experiment was terminated on the sixth day. But this is the first time that the endometrium has been reconstructed in vitro.

According to the “Science” magazine, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States have used3D bioprintingThe machine, using human collagen as the raw material, successfully printed a working heart tissue with a fineness of up to 20 microns. The printed heart tissue can be embedded in living cells and capillaries, and begin to beat, pumping out blood.

In addition, Shenzhen Advanced Technology Research Institute also applied for “3D printingArtificial endometrial membrane and its preparation method and application” patent. This invention relates to the field of biotechnology, specifically to3D printingArtificial endometrium prepared by technology.pass through3D bioprintingTechnology, the biocompatible stent and endometrial stromal cells/epithelial cells are made into a biologically active artificial endometrium.

visible,3D printingThe uterus may be realized in the future.

Although the artificial uterus has made good progress, from a technical point of view, the artificial uterus is still very immature. It is similar to an “eggization apparatus”, which can only perform part of the uterine function in the final stage of pregnancy and increase the survival rate of premature birth. These are not enough to support the entire reproductive process.Secondly, in the process of maternal growth and development, the fetus is not only nutrient acquisition, hormone regulation, but also emotional communication, etc. The difference between embryos outside the mother and normal embryos is still poorly understood by humans.

Compared with other artificial organs, artificial uterus faces more ethical controversies. Artificial uterus is to solve the problem of survival rate of premature infants and provide infertile women with fertility? Or is it used to facilitate women who don’t want to be conceived “in person”?

Improper use of technology may also cause unpredictable social problems. The advancement of technology should always serve the well-being of mankind. We also need more time for ethical thinking and debate.

(Editor in charge: admin)

With the arrival of 3D printed artificial uterus, women will not have to conceive themselves in the future?

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