On human development: lessons from stem cell systems

Abstract

In September 2014, over 100 scientists from around the globe gathered at Wotton House near London for the Company of Biologists' workshop 'From Stem Cells to Human Development'. The workshop covered diverse aspects of human development, from the earliest stages of embryogenesis to differentiation of mature cell types of all three germ layers from pluripotent cells. In this Meeting Review, we summarise some of the exciting data presented at the workshop and draw together the main themes that emerged.

Generation of hepatobiliary organoids from human induced pluripotent stem cells

“…For liver modeling in vitro, morphologic and functional maturity has been hampered by the difficulty in mimicking the cellular microenvironment during embryogenesis, that is, the interaction and co-development of various progenitors from multiple germ layers. 38 Given the critical role of mesodermal signals in hepatobiliary development, under the premise of hepatic endoderm differentiation committed by hepatic differentiation mediums, we simultaneously initiated mesodermal differentiation by including 25% mTeSR medium into the protocol, which is one of our key factors in this study. As differentiation proceeded, we observed hepatic, biliary and endothelial differentiation, and obtained HBOs within 4 weeks.…”

Looking inwards: opening a window onto human development

“…In this issue, you will find a report (Medvinsky and Livesey, 2015) on this meeting from two of the speakers -Alexander Medvinsky and Rick Livesey -as well as several Spotlight articles. Janet Rossant discusses key differences between early mouse and human development, and how these relate to the ability to derive different stem cell lines from these embryos (Rossant, 2015).…”

Self‐assembled liver organoids recapitulate hepatobiliary organogenesis in vitro

“…In vitro models of human tissue and organ development mostly use human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells . However, these models do not fully recapitulate the simultaneous differentiation of liver progenitors to the hepatocytic and biliary fates and the formation of liver with these two tissues present.…”