Description du projet
Des embryons synthétiques permettent d’étudier le développement embryonnaire
La période du développement embryonnaire est essentielle pour la survie et l’adaptation de tout organisme. Toutefois, l’étude de l’embryogenèse humaine a été entravée par la disponibilité réduite d’embryons humains, et de nombreux aspects demeurent mal compris. Le projet BLASTOID, financé par l’UE, entend développer des embryons synthétiques à partir de cellules souches humaines qui s’assemblent pour former des blastocystes préimplantatoires. Ces «blastoïdes», ainsi que des organoïdes utérins, permettront aux chercheurs d’étudier le processus de l’embryogenèse et de l’implantation. Étant donné que ces cellules souches peuvent être génétiquement modifiées, elles constituent un outil in vitro puissant pour étudier des médicaments visant l’amélioration de l’implantation.
Objectif
The first weeks of human embryonic development are crucial. Early abnormalities or insults result not only in infertility, but also contribute to long-term impairment of human health (e.g. cardiovascular disease and diabetes). Managing the onset of pregnancy therefore offers a huge opportunity to improve public health through effective family planning and disease prevention.
To better manage pregnancy, biomedical research would require large numbers of human embryos for use in genetic and drug screening. Unfortunately, however, the scarcity of human embryos makes this impossible. Recently, hope for an alternative approach has come from work in my lab showing that mouse stem cells self-organize into structures closely resembling pre-implantation embryos (a.k.a. blastocysts), that we termed blastoids. Because stem cells can be largely expanded and genetically-modified, these synthetic embryos provide a powerful, scalable alternative that is amenable to drug and genetic screens, thus opening numerous possibilities for therapeutic breakthroughs.
Here, I propose the development of human blastoids and uterine organoids to model embryogenesis and uterine implantation in vitro. This platform will be used to identify potential targets for the therapeutic modulation of the molecular pathways that control (1) early embryogenesis and (2) interactions between the embryo and uterus, and will pave the way to (3) establishing a drug discovery pipeline for the management of implantation.
This project will generate key insights into druggable molecules controlling early human embryogenesis, facilitating identification of therapeutic targets to improve in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures and contraception and, ultimately, to prevent several chronic diseases.
Champ scientifique
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesdevelopmental biology
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologycells technologiesstem cells
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetrics
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineembryology
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantInstitution d’accueil
1030 Wien
Autriche