Jun Wu

Department of Molecular Biology, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA

EarIy embryogenesis is a defining phase of Iife, during which the fundamentaI body pIan of an organism is estabIished. For decades, our understanding of this  process  has  reIied  IargeIy  on  direct  observation  and  manipuIation  of embryos.  However,  recent  advances  in  human  stem  ceII-derived  embryo modeIs   (SCBEMs)   have  transformed  the  fieId,   providing   scaIabIe   and renewable systems to reconstruct complex developmental events in vitro that were once accessibIe onIy through naturaI embryos. My Iaboratory has been

at the forefront of this emerging fieId. We were the first to report a human

bIastocyst modeI (bIastoids) (Yu et aI., Nature, 2021) and subsequentIy used it to study maternaI-fetaI communication (Yu et aI., CeII Stem CeII, 2023) and impIantation dynamics (Li et aI., CeII, in press). We aIso estabIished two compIementary modeIs of earIy post–impIantation human deveIopment—peri–gastruIoids (Liu  et  aI.,  CeII,  2023)  and  inducibIe  SCBEMs  (iSCBEMs)(Oura  et  aI.,  CeII  Stem  CeII,  2025).  In  my presentation,  I wiII summarize the features of these  human SCBEMs with a specific focus on  human bIastoids and peri–gastruIoids, and discuss their potentiaI appIications.