Sheep were successfully conceived in an artificial womb, and humans may be the next?

 a sheep breeding facility that uses artificial wombs.Sheep were successfully conceived in this artificial womb.

The Verge published this on Tuesday, April 25, 2017.

The lambs appeared to develop regularly throughout their four weeks in the external wombs.

Eight foetal lambs continued to develop inside what seemed to be large ziplock bags filled with tubes of blood and fluid, much like they would have inside their mothers. According to a new study that takes the first step towards an artificial womb, over the course of four weeks, their lungs and brains expanded, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, moved around, and learnt to swallow. This technology has only been tested on sheep so far, but one day it might help bring premature human infants to term outside the uterus.

The idea of a society where babies are grown in artificial wombs without the associated health risks is alluring. However, Alan Flake, foetal surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and principal author of the current study, cautions against jumping ahead of the facts. To assume that you can take an embryo, guide it through the early stages of development, and place it on our machine without the mother being the crucial component there, he claims, is utter science fantasy.

Instead, the goal of creating an external womb, or what Flake and his team refer to as the Biobag, is to provide premature children with a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in.

The Biobag may not resemble a womb much, but it has many of the same essential components: a transparent plastic bag that covers the foetal lamb and shields it from the environment, much like the uterus would; an electrolyte solution that bathes the lamb much like the amniotic fluid in the uterus; and a mechanism for the foetus to circulate its blood and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. In the journal Nature Communications, Flake and his associates published their findings today.

Due to their "well documented, dismal outcomes," Flake thinks the Biobag would improve the care options for severely preterm children. The primary factor in neonatal deaths is prematurity. Approximately 10% of newborns born in the US are preterm, meaning they arrive before 37 weeks of pregnancy. Of such births, 30,000, or around 6%, are deemed extremely preterm, meaning they occurred at or before the 28th week of pregnancy.

Due to the fact that they are still developing outside of their mothers' bodies, these newborns need intensive support. Mechanical ventilation, medicines, and IVs supplying nutrition and fluids are all necessary for the babies who make it through delivery. Many of these infants (between 20 and 50 percent of them) remain have a variety of health issues after leaving the intensive care unit because of the organ systems' stifled growth.

To assume you could accomplish this without the mother is "complete science fiction."

So, says neonatologist Elizabeth Rogers, co-director for the Intensive Care Nursery Follow-Up Program of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital, who was not involved in the study, "parents have to make critical decisions about whether to use aggressive measures to keep these babies alive, or whether to allow for less painful, comfort care." Families that claim, "If I had known the outcome for my baby could be this bad, I wouldn't have chosen to put her through everything," are one of the unsaid aspects of very preterm birth.

To recreate a more natural environment for a premature infant to continue developing in, scientists have been working on creating an artificial womb for decades. The sophisticated circulatory system that connects mother and foetus—in which the mother's blood flows to the baby and back, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide—had to be recreated, which was one of the major hurdles. The baby's heart can be harmed by an external pump, but the blood must flow with just the right amount of pressure.

Flake and his coworkers developed a pumpless circulatory system to address this issue. The blood flowed easily through the system after the umbilical blood arteries of the foetus were attached to a novel type of oxygenator. In fact, everything went so smoothly that blood flow could be powered by the baby's heartbeat alone without the need for another pump.

Scientists have been working on creating an artificial womb for decades.

The risk of infections that preterm infants in open incubators in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, experience was the following issue to be resolved. The bag and the synthetic amniotic fluid are used in this situation. The fluid moves in and out of the bag similarly to how it would in a uterus, eliminating waste, protecting the child from hospital-acquired infections, and maintaining the growing foetus's lungs' fluid levels.

Eight foetal lambs that were 105 to 120 days pregnant, or about similar to human newborns at 22 to 24 weeks of gestation, were used by Flake and his colleagues to test the setup for up to four weeks. After the four weeks were up, they were changed to a regular ventilator, much like a premature newborn in a NICU.

On the ventilator, the health of the lambs was remarkably identical to that of a lamb the same age that had just undergone caesarean delivery. The lambs were then taken off the ventilator, and all save one, which was old enough to breathe on its own, were put to death so the scientists could examine their organs. The organ systems that are most susceptible to damage in premature children, the lungs and brain, appeared unharmed and fully formed in a lamb that grew inside a mother.

Obviously, lambs are not humans.

Lambs' brains develop somewhat more slowly than humans', but they are still obviously not humans. Before this gadget can be used on human infants, the authors admit that additional scientific and safety studies will be necessary. Human-sized lambs placed in the Biobags early in pregnancy have already begun to undergo tests. In addition, they are keeping an eye on the few lambs that survived after being taken off the ventilator to check for potential long-term issues. The lambs seem to be doing very well so far. For first-in-human trials, Flake says, "I think it's reasonable to think about three years."

It's really inventive and so fascinating, adds Rogers. The numerous issues brought on by simply being born too soon can be lessened by having the ability to continue developing in a synthetic environment. The Biobag won't be able to address the issue that not every hospital has the means or knowledge to provide cutting-edge care to expectant moms, says Rogers. "We are aware that there are differences even after preterm delivery. Your outcomes are frequently better if you have access to high-quality regionalized treatment, she claims.

Rogers is also concerned about how the Biobag's publicity may affect parents who are caring for premature babies. "I believe that a lot of individuals have been impacted by preterm birth, and they believe that this will be some sort of magic cure. Prematurity, in my opinion, is simply very complicated. She asserts that the best course of action should be to prevent it from happening in the first place, but the Biobag could advance that research.

The investigation is ongoing for Flake. Every time he looks at our lambs, he exclaims, "I'm still blown away." "I think it's just amazing to watch the foetus on this support acting like it normally does in the womb," the observer said. To be able to prolong a normal pregnancy without the mother is a very amazing achievement.