Los organoides They represent a new way of reproducing the biology of healthy and diseased tissue in the laboratory, a miniature model that has been designed for multiple organs, including the brain.
Los 3D cerebroids have been developed from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotency cells, but a team of scientists from the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology and the Hubrecht Institute, both in Utrecht (Netherlands), has developed a new way to grow this type of organoids directly from brain tissue human fetal. The results of the new system are published in Cell and they point to a laboratory model for the study of the brain potentially more advanced than the current one.
In this research, led by Delilah Hendriks, Hans Clevers and Benedetta Artegiani, it has been proven that using small fragments of human fetal brain, instead of individual cells, favored the self-organization of these organoids.
Lead author Delilah Hendriks said: “These new organoids derived from fetal tissue may offer novel insights into what shapes different regions of the brain and what creates cellular diversity. Our organoids are an important addition to the field of brain organoids, which can complement existing ones made from pluripotent stem cells. “We hope to learn from both models to decode the complexity of the human brain.”
The tissue models obtained are the size of a grain of rice. However, they were enough to display a complex three-dimensional composition, where there was room for different types of cells in the nervous system. Specifically, the presence of radial glia, a cell specialized in the development of various cells of the central nervous system, was recorded, a fact that for scientists proves the similarity of these organoids with the human brain.