Cell Stem Cell
Volume 18, Issue 6, 2 June 2016, Pages 736-748
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Protocol Review
Stem Cell Models of Human Brain Development

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Recent breakthroughs in pluripotent stem cell technologies have enabled a new class of in vitro systems for functional modeling of human brain development. These advances, in combination with improvements in neural differentiation methods, allow the generation of in vitro systems that reproduce many in vivo features of the brain with remarkable similarity. Here, we describe advances in the development of these methods, focusing on neural rosette and organoid approaches, and compare their relative capabilities and limitations. We also discuss current technical hurdles for recreating the cell-type complexity and spatial architecture of the brain in culture and offer potential solutions.

Keywords

neural differentiation
stem cells
organoids
neural rosettes
brain organoids
cerebral organoids
human stem cells
in vitro
neural development

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