Hasty stem cells highlight limits with cortical organoids

Neural stem cells in mouse cortical organoids generate many of the same cell types as those in the developing brain, but individual stem-cell lineages do not follow the orderly developmental progression seen in vivo, according to a new study .

So even though the organoids’ self-organization can reproduce much of cortical development, it may not accurately mimic when individual neural stem cells divide or the neurons they produce, the findings suggest.

“The good news is that we show that a large part of the developmental processes—the fundamental processes—are remarkably similar,” says study investigator Simon Hippenmeyer , professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. The work, he says, is reassuring for researchers using organoids but also reveals some of the model’s limitations.