‘Mini-brain’ organoids mature in sync with human development

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford University (both CA, USA) conducted extensive genetic analysis on 3D ‘mini-brain’ organoids derived from human stem cells, discovering that they follow an internal clock and mature in sync with the timeline of human development, making these organoids improved models for studying disease. Within the study, which has been published in Nature Neuroscience, the team grew the ‘mini-brain’ organoids in vitro for 20 months, longer than has been studied previously, and are one of the first to recapitulate human brain function in a laboratory setting. These ‘mini-brains’ are produced by...