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During embryonic development, a fertilized egg develops into a complex organism with millions of cells and hundreds of different cell types. However, much is still unknown about the processes that direct embryonic development in mammals. This is partly because studies that investigate embryonic development often rely on the use of mouse embryos, which cannot easily be obtained in large numbers. Additionally, results obtained with mouse embryos are not always relevant for human embryonic development.

Gastruloids: studying embryonic development with stem cells

During this PhD trajectory we developed a method with which complex embryo-like structures can be generated in the lab from mouse stem cells. These structures, referred to as ‘gastruloids’, can be used to study mouse embryonic development in a dish. In addition, during this PhD trajectory we also developed a first human version of the gastruloids model system. Since gastruloids do not generate any brain or placental tissues they are not viable, and hence they conform to current ethical standards for human stem cell research.

Applications

The gastruloids model system can be used to study a stage of human development that is normally not accessible for research. Another main advantage of this model system is that gastruloids can be grown in large numbers. This means that we may be able to use them to at a large scale test new drugs for birth defects, or to test which compounds are toxic for developing embryos.