Generation of human blastocyst-like structures from pluripotent stem cells

Due to ethical concerns and restricted access to human blastocysts, we lack a comprehensive understanding of early human embryogenesis. A reliable model system that can recapitulate early stages of human embryogenesis would help solve this problem.Here we report a robust three-dimensional (3D), two-step induction protocol for generating blastocyst-like structures (EPS-blastoids) from human extended pluripotent stem (EPS) cells. Morphological and single-cell transcriptomic analyses revealed that EPS-blastoids contain key cell lineages and are transcriptionally similar to human blastocysts. Furthermore, EPS-blastoids also exhibited the developmental potential to undergo post-implantation morphogenesis in vitro to form structures with a cellular composition and transcriptome signature similar to human embryos that had been cultured in vitro for 8 or 10 days. In conclusion, human EPS-blastoids provide a robust new experimental platform for studying early developmental stages of the human embryo. To analyze the transcriptome signature of EPS-blasotids on different developmental days (including day6, day8 and day10).