Brain organoids, small pieces of the human cerebral cortex grown in the lab, are becoming valuable scientific tools. By modeling the growth of brain cells and structures, these “brains-in-a-dish,” which are self-organizing tissues generated from skin or blood cells that are reprogrammed into stem cells, can allow scientists to examine early development and the processes underlying neurodevelopmental diseases.
Despite their potential, organoids still have some critical limitations. In a study presented this week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago, Arnold Kriegstein, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and his team demonstrate that human brain organoids don’t accurately recapitulate all aspects of development. After comparing cells from organoids to those from normally developing tissue, his team reports that organoids have altered gene expression patterns and lack the cellular diversity in found in the human brain.
The Scientist spoke to Kriegstein about the study and ...
