Watch: 'Astonishing' video shows human embryo implanting in real time
Aug. 11 (UPI) -- A team of Spanish researchers announced Friday they have for the first time recorded video of a human embryo implanting itself in a simulated uterine wall, revealing never-before-seen details of how 5-day-old embryos carry out the mysterious process.
Using advanced microscopy techniques allowing the scientists to record the human embryo in full color and 3D, the "astonishing" videos provide the first-ever, real-time glimpse of the implantation process and have provided key insights into how it actually works, they said.
Researchers from the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia and Dexeus University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, said the videos reveal for the first time that embryos exert "considerable force" and employ digging traction as they "invade" the uterine tissue, becoming completely integrated with it.
The findings, published in journal Science Advances, found crucial differences between how mouse and human embryos move in connecting to the uterus wall, the authors said.
An "ex vivo" platform they developed using an artificial uterine matrix made of gel and collagen which allows for implantation outside of a human uterus made the videos possible. The system could have a "significant impact" on efforts to counter infertility and help those who are unable to conceive naturally, they predicted.
Failure of the implantation process is the main reason behind the relatively low effectiveness of assisted reproductive technologies, such as in-vitro fertilization, in which embryos are conceived in a lab and then transferred to the womb. Implantation occurs in only 25% to 30% of transferred embryos -- whether conceived in vivo or in-vitro -- with embryo quality cited as the most significant feature affecting implantation.
"We've opened a window into a stage of development that was previously hidden," the co-authors said in a statement to UPI. "After Day 5, when an embryo has 100 to 200 cells, it must implant, but until now, doctors couldn't observe it again until an ultrasound weeks later.
"With our system, we can test culture conditions or compounds that might improve implantation."
For example, the scientists say they have already developed a protein supplement that can be used in clinics to enhance implantation rates, available through their spin-off company Serabiotics and in collaboration with the Spanish pharmaceutical major Grifols.
"In short, this is a new tool for extending embryo observation and optimizing conditions for success," they said.
The videos show a donated human embryo powerfully pulling on the uterine matrix and reshaping it as it goes, illustrating the importance of "optimal matrix displacement."
Lead author Samuel Ojosnegros, principal investigator of IBEC's Bioengineering for Reproductive Health Group, said the initial real-time look at a human embryo implanting itself was a profound experience for him.
"We had some experience making time-lapse movies of mouse embryos, but the first time we saw a human embryo implanting was truly astonishing," he said. "Everything was different, the size, the shape, the behavior. They were stronger, more forceful, digging a hole into the matrix in a remarkably invasive way. Every detail felt unique.
"Watching it alive, in action, for the first time was absolutely mind-blowing."
Embryo implantation is the "holy grail" of reproduction -- and unlike in the animal world, in humans it can be a problematic process, resulting in about 1 in 6 people around the world having trouble making a baby, noted Dr. Mark Trolice, a professor at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine and founder/director of The IVF Center, a full-service reproductive medicine clinic in Orlando.
"Even though scientists have studied this for many years, they still do not fully understand how implantation works or what makes the uterus ready for an embryo," he told UPI. "One big mystery is why a woman's body can grow a baby made from sperm -- which is a 'foreign' tissue -- without rejecting it, as well as the ability to carry a donated egg."
The new study, he said, "gives researchers a closer look at implantation. They used an ex vivo model, which means they studied the process outside the body. This let them watch how embryos interact with the uterine lining (called the endometrium) and measure the tiny pulling and pushing forces from both mouse embryos and donated human embryos."
The videos showed for the first time that each species makes its own unique pattern of forces during implantation.
Trolice noted that while there are "some limits" to the Spanish study, "this work could lead to new ways of adjusting the uterine environment, which might help more embryos successfully implant.
"Before any treatment can be used, scientists will need to do human clinical trials. There are also important ethical and legal rules about using human tissues and embryos, which researchers must follow," he added.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
UPI
6 hours ago
- UPI
NASA seeks student entries for Human Exploration Rover Challenge
Aug. 15 (UPI) -- NASA is accepting contest entries from student teams to design, build and test rovers on the moon and Mars. In the Human Exploration Rover Challenge, students need to make models that are capable of going over a course while completing tasks for future Artemis missions, NASA said in a news release. In the challenge, teams design projects that sample of soil, water and air over a half-mile course with a simulated field of asteroid debris, boulders, erosion ruts, crevasses and an ancient streambed. There are remote-controlled and human-powered divisions. In the human one, teams will play the role of two astronauts in a lunar vehicle. They must use a custom-built tool to manually collect samples. In remote-controlled, they will provide pressurized rovers, which will contain the necessary tools to collect and test samples onboard. "NASA's Human Exploration Rover Challenge creates opportunities for students to develop the skills they need to be successful STEM professionals," Vemitra Alexander, the activity lead for the challenge at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., said. "This challenge will help students see themselves in the mission and give them the hands-on experience needed to advance technology and become the workforce of tomorrow." Entries will be accepted until Sept. 15 and the 32nd annual winners will be announced at an in-person event April 9-11, 2026, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center near NASA Marshall. Since the program began in 1994, more than 15,000 have participated in the Rover Challenge. Many students now work at NASA or in the aerospace industry. In the 2025 contest, more than 500 students participated, representing 35 colleges and universities, 38 high schools, and two middle schools in 20 states, Puerto Rico and 16 nations. "Last year, we saw a lot of success with the debut of our remote-controlled division and the addition of middle school teams," Alexander said. "We're looking forward to building on both our remote-controlled and human-powered divisions with new challenges for the students, including rover automation." The Artemis II is scheduled to reach the moon no earlier than April 26, and a crewed Artemis III is planned for mid-2027 aboard the Orion spacecraft. The last time humans landed on the moon was 1972 on Apollo 17.
Chicago Tribune
6 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
ICE spared him from deportation to Venezuela. He donated a kidney to save his ailing brother in the Chicago area
The minutes dragged into hours on Wednesday night as Jose Gregorio Gonzalez tossed and turned through the night. At 5 a.m. the next day, he was scheduled to donate his kidney to his younger brother, Alfredo Pacheco, who was also restless. By 2 a.m. the two couldn't stay in bed any longer and began to get ready for a day that they thought would never come. ',' Gonzalez said. 'It's a miracle, because all odds were against us.' His mind raced back to the nights he spent locked inside an immigration detention center earlier this year, convinced he would soon be deported, while his younger brother pleaded with ICE officials to let him stay. Gonzalez was Pacheco's only hope to keep living after being diagnosed with terminal renal failure. When doctors told Pacheco he needed a kidney transplant, Pacheco stepped up. ',' Gonzalez said in Spanish. 'I didn't think about it twice.' But in March, just shy of a few weeks to begin the process for the transplant, Gonzalez was suddenly arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement outside their home in Cicero. Without him, Pacheco's condition would continue to deteriorate, putting him on an endless waiting list to get a transplant due to his immigration status. And doctors warned that time was running out. Gonzalez knew it: If he was deported, his brother would die. On Thursday, the brothers were admitted to the University of Illinois Hospital, where the transplant surgery was successfully performed. Hospital officials confirmed that both Pacheco and Gonzalez were recovering well. After mounting pressure from advocates and elected officials, ICE granted Gonzalez a temporary humanitarian parole so that they could proceed with the transplant, an unexpected move at a time when the agency is ramping up enforcement. Unlike in past administrations, immigration experts say agents today have less discretion over individual cases and are under pressure to meet deportation quotas, leaving little room for compassion. Though Gonzalez must return to Venezuela by March — after he's recovered from surgery — he says he's deeply grateful to the agent who, as he put it, 'touched his heart' and gave him the chance to save his brother's life. ',' Gonzalez said, smiling, his voice quiet and weak. 'Everything is possible if you have faith.' Even through the surgery, Gonzalez wore the ankle monitor that ICE activated when he was released from the Clay County Jail in southwest Indiana. The brothers now face a long and perhaps complicated road to recovery. The two have limited funds from the few hours of work that Pacheco was able to put in after dialysis over the last few months. Gonzalez was still waiting for the work permit that ICE officials promised. They were able to pay for rent and Pacheco's health insurance for a few months thanks to a fundraiser organized by his neighbors in the town of Cicero and a page on a GoFundMe page still open. But the money is running out quickly. Pacheco said he is worried the two won't be able to rest or take care of themselves properly after the surgery, potentially offsetting the success of the organ transplant and putting their lives on line once again. 'I have to be honest, we were so focused on making sure that I could get the transplant that we didn't consider much of the rest,' Pacheco said. 'We only have each other and cousins here. The rest of our family is in Venezuela.' Their cousin Cristalyn Gonzalez, 38, said her husband took some days off work to take care of their two kids so that she can help the brothers while they're at the hospital. 'I want them to feel supported somehow,' she said. 'We never thought that we would go through something like in the country we thought was going to provide us with opportunities to make a better life for us and our children.' Pacheco was the first one of the brothers to make his way in 2022. Like many other Venezuelan migrants, he made the trek to the United States hoping to get asylum from political and socioeconomic turmoil in Venezuela, where he served as part of the military during his youth. By January 2024, Pacheco was suddenly diagnosed with end-stage renal disease not long after arriving in the Chicago area from the southern border. 'My world completely fell apart,' Pacheco said, who at first refused to tell his family back in Venezuela. 'They were counting on me to help out over there.' Gonzalez was already at the southern border when he learned of his younger brother's brother's prognosis. Though agents had denied him entry the first time, he tried to enter again a second time, knowing that he would be his brother's lifeline. That's when Gonzalez was detained for the first time at a Texas facility awaiting deportation, but since there were no deportation flights to Venezuela, he was released to join Pacheco in Chicago under immigration supervision in March 2024. 'That was the first miracle,' Pacheco said. 'I know God was on our side.' Due to the previous order of removal, unlike Pacheco, Gonzalez cannot apply for asylum or any other kind of immigration relief. ICE officials had no comment, citing confidentiality rules. The oldest of six and having lost two younger siblings to accidents over the last few years in Venezuela, Gonzalez felt it was a blessing to be by Pacheco's side even if it was only for a few months to donate his kidney. Until ICE took him once again in March of 2025, just shy of a month of starting the process to donate the kidney — as confirmed by UIC hospital officials — and days before his parole ended. 'It has been a difficult, painful and frustrating experience,' Pacheco said. 'The American Dream doesn't exist. It's a lie. But at least there are good people in Chicago.' Despite his illness and uncertainty, getting dialysis every other day for four hours in the early morning, Pacheco worked delivering packages for Amazon. He used most of the money to pay for rent and food, and the rest, he said, he would send to his wife and children in Venezuela. 'They think everything is going OK here in Chicago, and that one day I will be back healthy and with enough money to start anew,' Pacheco said. Pacheco's children, a girl, 17, and twin boys, 9, still don't know that their father has a terminal illness. They also didn't know that we underwent lifesaving surgery on Thursday morning. They do know however, that their father and their uncle are hoping to return to Venezuela sometime soon, when 'things are much better,' he said. 'I now pray that my body responds well and that I have the strength to undergo the recovery,' Pacheco said. The recovery process is not an easy one, said Hilda Burgos, a longtime community activist who was key to the movement that helped to establish and pass legislation in Illinois in 2014 that expanded access to organ transplants, specifically kidney transplants, and the drugs needed to maintain the transplants, for immigrants with an irregular status in the country. 'Undocumented people, 'illegal people,' as many like to call us, were allowed to donate our organs to save people's lives including us citizen, but if we needed one, we couldn't get one. We couldn't even get in line to get one,' Burgos said. 'These two brothers are a testament to great work that the community has done to advocate for each other. We are not talking about policies here, it is people's lives.' Burgos' passion to advocate for those undocumented people in need of transplants began after her son was initially denied a kidney transplant he needed to continue living when he was 18-year-old in 2009. After mourning pressure, he got the surgery, but it was also then when she became aware of the 'unfair system.' Shortly after, she joined a delegation of faith leaders and medical leaders representing a group of ailing people in need of lifesaving transplants in Chicago. The group, led by the late Rev. Jose Landaverde performed hunger strikes outside the city's major hospitals, marched from Little Village to UIC and then to Northwestern. And they even conducted a funeral march for one woman who had died after not receiving a liver transplant. 'The fight for transplants was not an easy one,' Landaverde told the Tribune in 2014. While the 2014 law represented a significant step, its initial impact was limited due to several factors. In response, the Illinois Transplant Fund, a nonprofit organization, was established in 2015 to provide financial assistance, primarily covering health insurance premiums for eligible individuals, including undocumented immigrants, needing transplants and their aftercare. Over the last 10 years, ITF has supported hundreds of patients through the transplant process, including Pacheco. 'Senate Bill 741 was a simple, compassionate measure that has saved the lives of those many of us may never meet,' said Rep. Lisa Hernandez, D-Cicero, 'It's in situations like Alfredo's and Jose's that we see the urgent need for our fiscal, health and education policy to not single out, but bring in, our neighbors without permanent legal status and those on society's margins.' Hernandez was one of the many elected officials leaders who rallied in support of the Venezuelan brothers, with more than 1,700 other people signing a petition requesting that ICE release Gonzalez. Most recently, in 2021, Illinois passed a new bill directing the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services to cover post-transplant care for noncitizen kidney transplant recipients. A spokesperson for HFS said that despite the most recent changes, including the dismantling of coverage for noncitizen adults 42 to 65 years old, 'noncitizens who are not eligible for comprehensive medical benefits who have End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) may be eligible for certain dialysis, kidney transplantation, and post kidney transplantation services.' Immigration advocates say the brothers' case underscores the human cost of detention policies and the importance of considering humanitarian exceptions. 'We celebrate not just a successful surgery, but the triumph of love and community over fear and cruelty,' said Erendira Rendón, vice president of immigrant justice at the Resurrection Project, which provided Gonzalez with legal and community support for his release. 'The fact that this feels like such an incredible victory speaks to how cruel our immigration system has become. Across the country, families are being torn apart as parents, caregivers, coaches and partners are detained indiscriminately and jailed indefinitely in overcrowded facilities that put their mental and physical health at risk.' As the Venezuelan brothers recover side by side in a small hospital room, the physical pain is a reminder that their journey is far from over. Though the transplant was a hard-won victory, their lives remain defined by uncertainty, limited resources, fragile immigration status and the looming deadline for Gonzalez's return to Venezuela in March. And yet, for the first time in months, they can finally rest. ',' Pacheco said. 'We leave our life in God's hands.' Their pain, once rooted in fear and desperation, is now part of a story of survival made possible not by policy, they said, but by people. A community of strangers in the Chicago area rallied around them, Pacheco said, offering the kind of support they never expected to find in a foreign country.
UPI
11 hours ago
- UPI
Argentina raises death toll from tainted fentanyl to more than 100
The government of Argentine President Javier Milei blamed blamed a local laboratory, HLB Pharma Group S.A., for the deaths of more than 100 people from contaminated fentanyl. Photo by Juan Ignacio Roncoroni/EPA Aug. 15 (UPI) -- More than 100 people are believed to have died from a batch of medical fentanyl that may have been contaminated, Argentina's government said in a statement from the presidential press office. The government blamed a local laboratory, HLB Pharma Group S.A., for the incident. The tragedy, described as one of the most serious in the country's public health history, began with the distribution of vials contaminated with multidrug-resistant bacteria -- including Klebsiella pneumoniae and Ralstonia pickettii -- used in public and private hospitals across several regions since early 2025. Although the first cases were detected in May, the death toll has continued to rise in recent days, reaching 96 confirmed deaths with at least nine more under investigation. From the presidential palace, President Javier Milei's government said the company responsible, led by businessman Ariel García Furfaro, engaged in "criminal conduct" by allowing the defective product to be distributed. The presidential press office said more than 300,000 vials of the drug were produced, about 45,000 of which were administered before recall protocols were activated. Unlike other critical medications, clinical-use fentanyl was not fully integrated into the national electronic tracking system, making it harder to detect the problem early and identify the health centers that received the contaminated vials. In a public appearance, Milei turned the health emergency into a political issue by accusing the Kirchnerist movement of having "covered up" for the laboratory's owners for years. Kirchnerism is a left-wing populist movement that blends Peronist nationalism with progressive social policies, economic interventionism and an emphasis on human rights "This is a longtime partner of the previous regime. We will not allow impunity," Milei said. He also warned that his government will seek the recusal of the federal judge handling the case if the businessman is not immediately taken into custody. The National Administration of Drugs, Food and Medical Technology said it had revoked the laboratory's authorization in February, but acknowledged there were failures in subsequent distribution controls. So far, 24 people linked to the production and distribution of fentanyl have been identified as suspects in the court case. All are barred from leaving the country and have had their assets seized, though no formal charges have been filed. At the same time, the victims' families are demanding justice. Patient organizations and health professionals have called for urgent reforms to the drug tracking system and a full audit of the health system's operations to prevent similar incidents in the future. In a press release, HLB Pharma Group said it is "at the disposal of the courts" and accused political and economic sectors of "opportunism" in carrying out a "media smear campaign" against the company. The company also said that "contamination such as that reported by some media -- involving one or more multidrug-resistant bacteria typically found in a hospital setting in the same batch -- is simply not possible in a laboratory setting."
