Ex utero embryogenesis of non-human primate embryos and beyond.

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. • The similarities and differences between the mouse, human and non-human primates (NHPs) in vitro embryo culture systems are compared. • Further optimization strategies of the NHP's embryo in vitro culture system are proposed. • The potential applications of the embryo culture system are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]