Japan’s government approved a request by scientists to conduct stem-cell experiments to create an animal-human hybrid and allow it to be brought to term 🧬🐀

Japan’s science ministry gave provisional approval to a proposal from researchers at the University of #Tokyo to create animal embryos that contain human cells and transplant them into surrogate animals, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported.

According to Asahi, researchers will take fertilized eggs from rodents that have been gene-edited to remove the ability to produce a pancreas themselves. To this, they will add human iPS cells to create hybrid animal-human embryos.

These in turn would be implanted into a host animal, in this case a rat or mouse, and allowed to grow. According to researchers, the goal of the experiment is to create organs viable for transplant into humans.

(Business Insider)