Dr. Tiago Rito is an incoming Assistant Professor jointly appointed between the School of Biomedical Sciences and the School of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Hong Kong (HKU).

Tiago was born and raised in Portugal. After earning his PhD in Statistics and Systems Biology from the University of Oxford, he developed computational tools to map chromatin dynamics during cell differentiation with Prof. Ana Pombo at the Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB, Germany). Transitioning to wet-lab research, he first joined the Brivanlou Lab in New York (USA), followed by the lab of Dr. James Briscoe at the Francis Crick Institute in London (UK), where he focused on human tissue biology and stem cell models of early human development.

His research continues to bridge disciplines to understand how embryos build tissues and organs — and how these insights can be used to engineer in vitro models that reliably reflect human development and disease.

Understanding how cells self-organize into tissues with controlled morphology, capable of further developing into stable organotypic units, is one of today's biggest scientific challenges. Self-organisation first requires a symmetry-breaking event where a subpopulation of cells acquires a different gene expression profile changing its mechanical and signalling properties. Progressively new cell-cell contacts are created and further interactions with extracellular matrix and secreted molecules will form the next round of organization. Understanding this process is important to control organ formation, which is aggravated by often requiring the coordination of signalling and mechanics between tissues of different embryonic origin.
Unlike in vitro cellular models that mimic the architecture of a specific organ primordia, e.g. intestinal/ cortical organoids, a new class of protocols focuses on understanding self-organization in the early embryo to reliably juxtapose embryonic cell populations. These new “stem-cell-based embryo models” integrate different germ layers to generate structures resembling early mammalian embryos (or their trunk), with particular attention to cell type proportions and morphology. 

Our lab is conducting the systematic studies, both computational and experimental, that will lead us to predictable trunk-organoid outcomes from pluripotency. These customizable organoid collections will be the perfect substrate to start bridging early development and organogenesis. 

1. Tiago Rito, A. R. G. Libby, M. Demuth, M.-C. Domart, J. Cornwall-Scoones and James Briscoe (2024), Nature, ”Timely TGF-β signalling inhibition induces notochord.”
2. M. Yang*, Tiago Rito*, J. Metzger, J. Naftaly, R. Soman, J. Hu, D.F. Albertini, D.H. Barad, Ali H. Brivanlou and Norbert Gleicher (2021), ”Depletion of aneuploid cells in human embryos and gastruloids”, Nature Cell Biology 23: 314-321
   * co-first authors
3. T. Haremaki*, J. J. Metzger*, Tiago Rito*, M. Z. Ozair, E. Siggia, F. Etoc and Ali H. Brivanlou (2019), ”Self-organizing human neuruloids allow disease modeling in the developing ectodermal compartment”, Nature Biotechnology 37(10): 1198-1208.

• We are actively recruiting at all levels. Please check our website and email directly to discuss potential projects and positions.