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Cerebral Organoids: A Model of Brain Development

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Abstract

The development of the human brain in normal or pathological conditions is currently infeasible to fully reproduce in animal models, warranting a search for alternative solutions. Significant progress has recently been achieved in the development of methods to culture human cerebral organoids. Cerebral organoids are 3D cultures wherein brain-specific cell types develop from embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells. As a result of the self-organization of nervous tissue, unique features of human brain development are reproduced in cerebral organoids, while being absent from the developing rodent brain. However, organoids do not exactly copy the brain, and a number of restrictions should be overcome to expand the opportunities to study the development and disorders of the human brain with their use in the future. It is clear that the modeling of cerebral organoids has already opened up prospects for both basic and clinical research. The review discusses the methods to culture nervous tissue, the means to produce cerebral organoids, the features of their self-organization, and the modeling of normal developmental processes and brain pathology with cerebral organoids.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are grateful to our colleagues for helpful discussions and advice.

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 19-74-00117).

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  1. Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 119334, Moscow, Russia

    K. K. Sukhinich & M. A. Aleksandrova

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  1. K. K. Sukhinich
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  2. M. A. Aleksandrova
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The authors equally contributed to the review.

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Correspondence to K. K. Sukhinich.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. This review does not contain any studies involving animals or human subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Translated by T. Tkacheva

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Sukhinich, K.K., Aleksandrova, M.A. Cerebral Organoids: A Model of Brain Development. Russ J Dev Biol 51, 231–245 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1062360420040074

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