Scientists have created an artificial womb which they hope will prove useful in saving human babies born prematurely.  They've already used it successfully on fetal lambs.

"What we tried to do is develop a system that mimics the environment of the womb as closely as possible," says Dr. Alan Flake of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia; he led the study published in the journal Nature Communications.  "It's basically an artificial womb," he said.

Illustration Of Artificial Womb/The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

The device works similarly to a natural womb.  The fetus sits in what looks like a big ZipLoc bag surrounded by synthetic amniotic fluid.  A pump extracts blood from the umbilical cord, filtering out carbon dioxide and adding oxygen and nutrition as it circulates back into the fetus.  The bag is heated to match the temperature of the natural womb. Blockchain casino https://fairspin.app/en/

Dr. Flake says the system allowed eight fetal lambs to develop normally for about a month.  "They've had normal growth.  They've had normal lung maturation.  They've had normal brain maturation.  They've had normal development in every way that we can measure it," he says.

The group hopes to test the device on very premature human babies within three to five years.  It would be designed to help babies born 23 to 26 weeks into the normal 40 week human pregnancy.

"If you can just use this device as a bridge for the fetus then you can have a dramatic impact on the outcomes of extremely premature infants," Flake says.  "This would be a huge deal."