Over the past few years, a number of research groups have reported striking progress on the generation of in vitro models from mouse and human stem cells that replicate aspects of early embryonic development. Not only do these models reproduce some key cell fate decisions but, especially in the mouse system, they also mimic the spatiotemporal arrangements of embryonic and extraembryonic tissues that are required for developmental patterning and implantation in the uterus. If such models could be developed for the early human embryo, they would have great potential benefits for understanding early human development, for biomedical science, and for reducing the use of animals and human embryos in research. However, guidelines for the ethical conduct of this line of work are at present not well defined. In this Forum article, we discuss some key aspects of this emerging area of research and provide some recommendations for its ethical oversight.

在过去的几年中，许多研究小组报告了在体外产生方面的惊人进展来自小鼠和人类干细胞的模型可复制早期胚胎发育的各个方面。这些模型不仅重现了一些关键的细胞命运决定，而且特别是在小鼠系统中，它们还模仿了胚胎发育和子宫外组织发育所需的胚胎和胚外组织的时空排列。如果可以为人类早期胚胎开发这样的模型，那么它们对于理解人类早期发育，生物医学和减少研究中对动物和人类胚胎的使用将具有巨大的潜在益处。但是，目前尚没有很好地定义有关此工作的道德行为准则。在此论坛文章中，我们讨论了这一新兴研究领域的一些关键方面，并就其道德监督提供了一些建议。