Figure 3. Developmentally impaired human embryos inhibit the secretion of selective implantation modulators by decidualizing ESCs.

Primary ESCs were first decidualized for 5 days and then co-cultured with human embryos or not (control cultures, Con). Over the 72-hour co-culture period, 30 embryos arrested (Arr) whereas 11 continued to develop normally (Dev). Analysis of the culture supernatants revealed that the presence of an arresting embryo inhibited the secretion of the indicated factors. The letters above the box plots indicate significant differences between groups. P<0.01 for all comparisons except for IL-6 and IL-17 (P<0.05).