Generation of human blastoids from three-dimensionally cultured primed human pluripotent stem cells
A human blastoid, which is an artificial human blastocyst, and has a potential as great tool to investigate fundamentals during the development and establish in vitro models to study the pregnancy failure and birth deficiency, without the use of a human embryo. In 2021, although some methods to generate blastoids have been reported, they used human naïve pluripotent stem cells, which often show genomic instability during in vitro culture. Here, we introduce the simple, robust and scalable method to generate human blastoids from more stable human primed embryonic stem cells. By using non-cell-adhesive hydrogel, hESC aggregates received the chemophysical cellular environment, and forming the asymmetric blastoid structure with the cellular distribution like a human blastocyst. The obtained blastoids also showed the capability the implantation in vitro. This model will enable to elucidate the underlying mechanisms of human pre- and post-implantation process, leading to assisted reproductive technology. Overall design: We analyzed cDNA profiles StepOnePlus from RNAs in individual KhES1 human embryonic stem cells and human blastoids generated from KhES1 cells using Illumina Next seq 500.