The group of Jürgen Knoblich at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, has developed a new method that allows scientists to cultivate brain organoids with distinct cortical areas and front-to-back patterning. Together with collaborators at the Human Technopole and the University of Milan-Bicocca, they report a method that gives scientists a deeper look into human-specific brain development and disorders. The study was published in Nature Methods on September 18.
Brain organoids are extensively used to study human brain development. Derived from human pluripotent stem cells , the 3D models allow scientists to study unique properties of the human brain. Researchers use cortical organoids to answer fundamental questions such as how the human brain can grow to its large size or how the human brain's long-range connections form.
However, cortical organoids are fairly uniform spherical cultures—like miniature footballs. This ball-shaped structure is quite unlike the oblong human cortex, which is structured into distinct domains from back to front, each with a distinct function. Therefore, the team developed a new protocol to generate cerebral organoids organized into distinct domains along the longitudinal axis.
The work was spearheaded by Camilla Bosone, Veronica Krenn and Davide Castaldi. Experimental platform to understand brain disorders During development, the forming brain is patterned by different signaling molecules, so-call.