Human developmental biology: the past, present and future

This year, 2024, marks the 10th anniversary of the first Development ‘From Stem Cells to Human Development’ meeting, and today is the beginning of the sixth meeting at Wotton House in the UK. The influence the meeting has had on the field is discussed in a recent article by science historian Nick Hopwood (Hopwood, 2024a), who suggests that human developmental biology has experienced peaks of attention and periods of neglect, fuelled by the productivity of technical innovations. In the current issue of Development, we have published a complementary Perspective article by Nick highlighting key aspects of the history of the field for an audience of stem cell and developmental biologists (Hopwood, 2024b). In addition, Development invited researchers from eight countries around the world to respond to these ideas and comment on how human development is perceived in their country of work, discussing how they believe their local legal, political, regulatory, societal and technological frameworks are influencing the field’s trajectory (Clark et al., 2024). The authors and some highlights from the Perspective are shown in the image below, and you can click the image to read the whole article.

Recognising that this article only manages to capture a small sample of the breadth of human development and stem cell research worldwide, we encourage you, readers of the Node, to share your opinion on human developmental biology in your country of work. Do you believe that interest in human developmental biology is cyclical, as suggested by Hopwood? If so, what lies ahead? Are we experiencing a boom or bust in support of human development research? How long might this trajectory lead before turning on its head? What societal undercurrents might contribute to maintaining or changing the field’s course? The floor is yours…

References

Clark, A.T., Goolam, M., Hanna, J.H., Long, K., Nicol, D., Petropoulos, S., Saitou, M., Tam, P.L., Wang, H. Human developmental biology – a global perspective. Development. 151(17). https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.203092

Hopwood, N. (2024a). Species Choice and Model Use: Reviving Research on Human Development. In Journal of the History of Biology. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-024-09775-7

Hopwood, N. (2024b). Past and future of human developmental biology. Development. 151(17). https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.203085

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