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Experiments with human embryos could begin as early as this summer
Last reviewed: 02.07.2025
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Specialists from Great Britain intend to begin experiments on human embryos; to do this, they only need to obtain permission from the relevant committee on fertility issues.
The team of scientists will be led by Kathy Niakan and will be the first team of specialists outside of China to conduct such research.
A few months ago, a group of Chinese scientists conducted an experiment to change the genes of a human embryo using the CRISPR technique, then the specialists wanted to see if the said technique could be used in the case of human embryos. Katie Niakan's team also plans to use this technique to control the work of genes during the early development of the human body. The goal of this experiment is to reduce the number of spontaneous abortions and develop new methods of infertility treatment.
Today, only 50% of embryos created for IVF are suitable for implantation in a woman’s body, and more than half of the embryos do not take root, which causes miscarriages with this method of fertilization.
In the course of their work, Niakan and his colleagues intend to study the reasons for this phenomenon in more detail.
In the first week of human embryo development, each cell receives a specific purpose - some go to the development of the placenta, some to the development of the body of the future person, etc. According to biologists, they have managed to find genes that are responsible for the distribution of cells and to verify this, it is necessary to conduct experiments.
The scientists noted that during the work they plan to switch off genes in one-day embryos; after a week, the embryos will be killed and their structure analyzed. As a result, the scientists will be able to establish whether switching off genes affected the ability of cells to organize or whether there are other mechanisms for distributing the role of cells.
The scientists plan to conduct a similar experiment with several genes, and they say that identifying genes that are important for early development will help to better select embryos for IVF, which will help reduce the number of miscarriages.
In addition, this work will allow us to develop improved conditions for the initial development of embryos and identify mutations that can affect the development of the embryo and provoke a miscarriage.
Scientists are already conducting similar experiments with animal embryos, but there are still significant differences between rodents and humans. In their work, Niakan's team intends to use frozen embryos prepared for IVF, which were voluntarily donated to science by parents. To study the influence of one gene, up to 30 embryos may be needed; according to preliminary estimates, about 120 embryos may be needed for the entire experiment.
The team of British specialists hopes that the committee will approve the experiments in the very near future and, if given the green light, the specialists will begin work this summer.
Last December, the scientific community discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the method of changing human genes. Scientists assume that in the future, such experiments could lead to the creation of "custom children", i.e. when parents can choose the color of eyes, hair, etc. As a result, scientists abandoned experiments with human embryos, so as not to provoke such a development of events.
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