Understanding cellular and molecular processes underlying the human early post-implantation development represents one of the most fundamental questions in development and stem cell biology. As embryos implant into the uterus a week after fertilization, human development beyond the blastocyst stage is extremely difficult to study due to the inaccessibility of embryos and ethical concerns. The advents in the human embryo in vitro culture system provide an easily accessible, tractable, and perturbable platform to dissect key developmental events of human early embryonic development. However, these studies stopped around gastrulation to technical and ethical limitations, and our understanding of human gastrulation and early organogenesis remains poor. As closely related species to humans, non-human primates (NHPs) are suitable surrogate species to interrogate mechanisms underpinning human embryonic development. Here, we review the most recent advances in embryo in vitro culture systems of NHP and discuss their potential optimization strategies and applications.

了解人类早期植入后发育的细胞和分子过程是发育和干细胞生物学中最基本的问题之一。由于胚胎在受精后一周植入子宫，由于胚胎的不可获取性和伦理问题，囊胚期之后的人类发育研究极其困难。人类胚胎体外培养系统的出现提供了一个易于访问、易于处理且易于扰动的平台来剖析人类早期胚胎发育的关键发育事件。然而，这些研究因技术和伦理限制而停留在原肠胚形成方面，而且我们对人类原肠胚形成和早期器官发生的理解仍然很差。作为与人类密切相关的物种，非人类灵长类动物（NHP）是研究人类胚胎发育机制的合适替代物种。在这里，我们回顾了NHP胚胎体外培养系统的最新进展，并讨论了其潜在的优化策略和应用。