First "human monkey chimeric" study in China has been suspended

The study, led by Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, a Hispanic scientist at the Salk Institute in California, aims to create chimeras, an organism made up of cells from two or more species, that is designed to inactivethetly incapacitate the genes needed for the development of organs in monkey embryos and then inject human stem cells into monkey embryosthe study, which involved the participation of Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte's team and scientists from the Catholic University of Murcia in Spain, and chinese researchers were reportedly involvedJuan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, an expert in stem cell biology and organ regeneration, led his team in developing a new technology that transforms one type of mature cell into another (such as skin cells into blood cells), to a certain extent streamlining the experimental process in the stem cell field, and has won the National Institutes of Health Excellence Award in 2016, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte is also a controversial figure, leading his team in 2017 to inject human pluripotent stem cells into early embryos in pigs, creating "chimeric" embryos containing both human and pig cellsHe noted that the technology, if used reasonably, could hopefully produce complete human organs and assist in organ transplantation in the future, but the chimeric embryo was eventually terminated at 28 days because of ethical controversyIn this regard, Time magazine also named him one of the "50 Most Influential People in Medical Health" in 2018 for this studythis time, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte chose monkeys with closer human relatives for testing, but for this human-monkey embryo chimeric, it also caused huge ethical controversy, under ethical and public pressure, and the Juan Carlos IzpisuaBelmonte team destroyed the embryo on the 14th day of embryo developmenthas long been the ethical issue of "human-animal nhimtos" research, which is of the public's greatest concern, and some bioethicists are concerned that the ethical consequences could be unimaginable if human-animal enedited embryos develop into a human-like nervous system, or if they exhibit human-like behavior after full-term developmentRobin Lovell-Badge, a developmental biologist at the Francis Crick Institute in the UK,, said: "I don't think it's particularly ethically worrying because you don't let them develop too long to produce a nervous system or develop in any way, it's just a real cell ballBut if you allow them to develop all the time, and human cells contribute a lot to the central nervous system, then obviously this can be a problemHowever, as the field of stem cells and gene editing continues to advance, more and more scientists are planning to embed human pluripotent stem cells (ips) into early-stage embryos in the hope of producing human tissues and organs in animalsin August, Japan's Ministry of Science and Culture approved the first "human-animal hybrid embryo" experiment, and Japan is the first country to support the experiment, allowing embryos to develop into full-term deliveryit is understood that the experiment, initiated by stem cell scientist Hiromitsu Nakauchi, a stem cell scientist who heads the University of Tokyo and Stanford University, will lead the team in designing rodent embryos that cannot grow their own pancreas and then implanthuman stem cells into them to produce "polymer animal embryos" containing human pancreatic cellsThey will then transfer embryos to adult rodents and grow organs, a study aimed at the low rate of organ transplant donation and the vulnerability to rejectionto reassure the public about the emergence of "hybrid" creatures, Hiromitsu Nakauchi said they had taken these issues into account in designing experiments"We try to do target organ production, so implanted human cells will only participate in the development of the target organ (the pancreas)At the same time, he and his team closely monitored the baby fetus, and once it was found that the brain contained more than 30 percent of human cells, it would not be born and would be observed for up to two years after birthin other countries except Japan, including a few countries, including the United States, which allow the introduction of human cells into animal embryos, are prohibited from introducing certain human cells into embryos of non-human primates close to humans, such as monkeys and gorillas, and that such embryos must be "born" to be discontinued by their full months, and the National Institutes of Health has stopped funding such research since 2015.