Jacob Hanna

Spotlight

Stem cell biologist Jacob Hanna has created the most advanced human embryo models to date, using stem cells to grow models that developed to the equivalent of a 14-day-old embryo in the womb. Though the idea of engineering embryos in labs is bound to be controversial, Hanna appears undaunted in his scientific ambitions: He also recently co-founded a startup, Renewal Bio, which aims to draw on his research to grow embryo models from which cells could be harvested in order to transplant tissues and organs.

Hanna recently spoke with STAT’s Nicholas St. Fleur about his research:

What is important about the first four weeks of embryo development?

This is where all the drama happens. The first four weeks of human embryo development is when the embryo makes all of its organs. The rest is just growth. 

During this period it’s just impossible to obtain samples. It’s too early. It’s unethical. Women usually don’t know they’re pregnant. Even if you get sent one sample here, one sample there, this is very good for building an atlas or a reference, but for biology, as we know from mice, you need millions of samples. We’re never going to have that. And we shouldn’t have that. But this becomes an alternative. Even though it’s not identical — that’s why we call it a model — it might allow us an easy way to see how organs form from stem cells outside the uterus without using an egg and sperm. When we start from stem cells, in this day and age with CRISPR technologies, we can engineer the cells, we can label them, we can track them. Which is really exciting for us.

For the everyday Jane or Joe on the street here, how could this technology change their lives in the future?

Let’s imagine a woman who for some reason doesn’t have eggs, maybe she could be a cancer survivor because of chemotherapy, or she decided to have babies a bit too late in her career or things like that, or it could be Joe who developed leukemia, and he cannot find a suitable blood donor. They would give a drop of blood or a skin cell. We will make stem cells from them. We will take them to this naive condition that is very early on. Then we will move forward in these unique conditions and devices. Then make an embryo model of about day 50 or day 40. And then from there, just take the blood cells and give a bone marrow to Joe, or take the gonad and after one month give Jane eggs that she can go and do IVF with a sperm donor or her husband or whoever she chooses.

Read the full conversation.