Sarah Norcross, Director of the Progress Educational Trust (PET), said: 

Generating organoids during a pregnancy makes for a promising addition to established ways of studying early human development. 

While the study of cells and tissues obtained from terminations will remain vitally important to research, this new approach has the potential to offer different insights.

The discovery that fetal organoids can be derived from cells in amniotic and tracheal fluids is remarkable.

This complements other avenues of research, such as the study of fetal tissue from terminations, that are currently helping researchers to fill in missing pieces of the developmental puzzle.

 Amniotic fluid already offers valuable ways of conducting prenatal tests. But if cells in amniotic fluid can be used to derive organoids during a pregnancy, then these organoids might yield valuable information that is not apparent from the cells alone.

This possibility, which may lead to benefits in prenatal diagnosis and medicine, deserves further investigation.

We are living through exciting times in developmental biology, with a growing repertoire of methods for investigating our beginnings and understanding congenital diseases.

Organoids created from amniotic and tracheal fluids are a promising addition to established approaches.

The creation of organoids from amniotic and tracheal fluids is a significant research achievement.

Further research along these lines will be needed, to see what applications these organoids might have in prenatal diagnosis and medicine.