Issues

Summary: This Spotlight discusses how findings in intestinal and cancer organoids could be applied to neural organoid models to probe metabolic changes during human neurodevelopment.

Summary: This Spotlight summarises how our understanding of haematopoietic development in vivo can be applied to expand haematopoietic stem cells in vitro and aid our understanding of the development, and possible treatment, of blood cancers.

Summary: This Spotlight discusses technological advances that have increased the field's understanding of human development and how these new findings are being leveraged to improve in vitro model systems.

Summary: Emerging in vitro models of human development, such as blastoids, gastruloids and organoids, could be applied in prospective developmental toxicity testing, provided they are thoroughly validated and meet regulatory approval.

Summary: This Development at a Glance article gives an overview of the potential of assembloids – three-dimensional, self-organizing in vitro cell culture systems constructed by integrating organoids or organoids and other cell lineages.

Summary: This Review summarises the methods that have been developed to generate pancreas organoids in vitro and discusses how they have been used to uncover aspects of pancreas development and their potential for future discoveries.

Summary: In this Review, we examine the various human and mouse stem-cell based models that recapitulate key features of early embryogenesis, and discuss their applications and findings.

Summary: This Review describes how human pluripotent stem cells can be differentiated towards placode progenitors and their highly diverse derivatives providing a model system to study placode development, physiology and pathology in a human setting.

Summary: A detailed protocol for long-term culture of human esophagus tissue enabling benchmarking of in vitro models against a cell-type atlas of adult human esophagus and establishment of a diverse biobank of in vitro esophagus tissue.

Summary: WNT signalling and laminin 511 support the in vitro expansion of hippocampal progenitor cells, opening new avenues for studying cell type-dependent neurogenesis, synaptic transmission in the hippocampus and future cell-based therapies.

Summary: A human 3D culture model reveals that pleckstrin homology leucine-rich repeat phosphatase 1 is a previously unidentified regulator of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator channel.

Summary: The combination of light-sheet fluorescence and expansion microscopy enables imaging of mature human brain organoids in toto and down to synaptic resolution.

Summary: An optimized protocol is presented that allows morphological, quantifiable differences between the damaged and control human neuronal networks to be detected in three-dimensional cultures.

Summary: Asymmetric segregation of cellular components, which may contribute to the fate and behavior of human neural progenitors, is allowed by a diffusion barrier in the endoplasmic reticulum membrane during cell division.

Summary: The key developmental transcription factor eomesodermin can replace Wnt priming in the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into mesendoderm.

Summary: Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived model systems reveal defects in early neurogenesis due to dysregulation of key metabolic pathways associated with Leigh syndrome.

Summary: This paper shows the generation of myelinating human oligodendrocytes from dermal fibroblasts using a direct lineage conversion technique, which could be of high interest for regenerative medicine applications.

Summary: Self-elongating neural tube organoids recapitulate key aspects of the morphology, anterior-posterior patterning, neural crest emergence and neural differentiation of mouse embryo in vivo by self-organization.

Summary: Prolonged hypoxia (reduced oxygen tension) induces WNT pathway activity and is harnessed to enhance differentiation of embryonic stem cells into gastruloids.

Summary: A high-throughput microfluidic-based platform to decipher the essential cues for embryonic and extraembryonic lineage specification in primate embryogenesis.

Summary: New optimized protocols for directed differentiation of mouse epiblast stem cells into definitive endoderm and forebrain-patterned organoids.

Summary: iPSC-derived lung bud tip progenitors emerge in organoid culture, can be isolated and expanded, are transcriptionally similar to primary bud tip progenitors, and can differentiate into airway or alveolar organoids.

Summary: A set of molecules directs the co-formation of blastocyst-stage primitive endoderm-like and epiblast-like cells in embryoid bodies and blastoids. This embryonic–extra-embryonic niche self-organizes and progresses through post-implantation-like stages via a sequence of mutual inductions.

Summary: Aspiration of embryonic cell aggregates through microfluidic channels, in combination with two-photon imaging, reveals spatiotemporal deformations, visco-elastic properties and cell rearrangement dynamics that could play a role in developmental tissue organization.