2024-03-07 18:00:00
British research team ‘Nature Medicine’ announces that it is possible to obtain fetal cells without collecting tissue and observe deformities during the artificial culture process, opening the way for research without ethical restrictions
If fetal cells in amniotic fluid are cultured and made into organoids, it is easy to identify congenital diseases or malformations in the fetus during pregnancy. Getty Images Korea
A path has been opened to study how fetal organs are made and function using amniotic fluid from pregnant women. It is expected to be of great help in detecting congenital diseases, deformities, and fetal development processes.
The research team, led by Professor Mattia Geli of the Department of Surgery and Interventional Sciences at University College London (UCL) in the UK, succeeded in artificially creating fetal organs such as lungs and kidneys by collecting stem cells from amniotic fluid of pregnant women, and published the research results in the international academic journal ‘On the 4th (local time). It was published in ‘Nature Medicine’.
It is difficult to collect fetal tissue directly after the second trimester of pregnancy when the fetal organs are growing. This is because it violates research ethics. Only tissue samples donated and approved through abortion, etc. can be used, so research on fetal organ development has been limited.
There is also a method of using ‘artificial organs (organoids)’, which are artificially created by replicating human organs. In theory, the desired organoid is obtained using human embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), which can differentiate into all cells. The problem is that embryonic stem cells or iPS are difficult to handle and take a long time to differentiate into the desired organoid, making them difficult to apply to a pregnant fetus.
Amniotic fluid, which contains the fetus in a pregnant woman’s uterus, protects the fetus from external shocks and helps the musculoskeletal and internal organs develop well. Amniotic fluid contains the mother’s blood components as well as organic substances secreted by the fetus, such as proteins and electrolytes.
The research team noted that the amniotic fluid contained some cells that had been shed from the fetus’s body. As a result of analyzing cell fragments confirmed to be fetal from amniotic fluid collected from 12 pregnant women, epithelial cells that differentiated into stomach, kidney, and lung cells were discovered. When these cells were cultured, organoids for each organ began to form, and after two weeks, they grew to the point where they could be seen with the eye. There have been cases in which cells were collected through fetal amniotic fluid tests to identify genetic diseases, etc., but this is the first time that organoids have been cultured.
The research team said, “Organoids using organ cells in amniotic fluid are easy to manipulate and have well-established culture technology, so they can be implemented within 4 to 6 weeks,” adding, “Compared to the existing induced pluripotent stem cell method, which takes 5 to 9 months to produce organoids, “It’s much faster,” he said. This means that you can start coping a few months before your baby is born.
The research team did not stop there and created lung organoids by collecting amniotic fluid from fetuses suffering from the rare disease ‘congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH).’ Congenital diaphragmatic hernia is a disease in which a hole forms in the diaphragm, the muscle under the lungs, during fetal development. Abdominal organs push up the lungs through the diaphragm hole, interfering with the development of the fetus’s lungs.
Organoids made from lung cells from the amniotic fluid of fetuses with CDH were characterized as they developed. The research team expected that by using amniotic fluid, it would be possible to identify and treat congenital diseases during pregnancy, such as CDH, cystic fibrosis, which causes mucus to accumulate in the lungs, and malformations of the kidneys and intestines. He also emphasized that the scope of research on the fetal development process, which had been ethically restricted until now, has expanded. The research team emphasized, “We can monitor fetal diseases using organoids while continuing the pregnancy,” and added, “Congenital diseases require personalized treatment from the fetal stage.”
Byeong-gu Lee, Donga Science Reporter [email protected]
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