Scientists have found a way to
pause the development of early mouse embryos for up to a month in the lab – and
later resume normal growth – a finding with potential implications for assisted
reproduction, aging and even cancer. The research involved experiments with
pre-implantation mouse embryos, called blastocysts. Researchers from University
of California, San Francisco in the US found that drugs that inhibit the
activity of a master regulation of cell growth called in mTOR can put these
early embryos into a stable and reversible state of suspended animation. Normally,
blastocysts only a last day or two, max, in the lab. But blastocysts treated
with mTOR inhibitors could survive up to four weeks. Researchers showed that
paused embryos may quickly resume normal growth when mTOR inhibiters were
removed, and developed into healthy mice if implanted back into a recipient
mother. The drugs appear to act by reducing gene activity across much of the
genome. The researchers believe that it should be possible to extend the
suspended animation for much longer than the 30 days observed in the present
study.
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