Dr. Laura Gonzalez-Cano
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology
Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine
Münster, Germany

Date: Tuesday, 4-September-2018
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Venue: Seminar Room 1, G/F Laboratory Block,
Faculty of Medicine Building,
21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong

Summary: 
The controlled generation of desired functional cell types is a challenging and long-standing goal of regenerative medicine. Growing evidence highlights the need for an in vivo–like niche that resembles adult human tissues, and that allows for the recreation of a microenvironment that permits the development of regeneration approaches with direct biomedical application. The past several years has seen the flourishing of methods for the ex vivo production of three-dimensional (3D) structures of differentiating hPSCs and hiPSCs, giving rise to the new biological discipline of stem cell organoids. Various studies have already described the production of neural differentiated cells in a 3D culture environment, allowing for gaining a deeper knowledge of the 3D organization and gene and protein expression profiles of the generated structures.

In our lab, we aim to further develop these structures into a meaningful model that will allow us to characterize and define the mechanism and chain of events implicated in the generation of neural stem cells in an in vivo–like environment through cellular reprogramming. The talk discusses the different existing protocols and their adaptation for the generation and characterization of cerebral organoids.

ALL ARE WELCOME