Human brain organoids are remarkable platforms for modeling features of human brain development and diseases. Building on methods to generate organoids to model different brain regions such as the cortex and the midbrain, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have generated the first organoids of the arcuate nucleus (ARC), an essential structure in the hypothalamus that sends signals of hunger and feeling full. This part of the hypothalamus exhibits a tremendous amount of cell diversity, and is far more complex than previously modeled parts of the brain.
In a recent paper in Cell Stem Cell, researchers at Penn report generating arcuate organoids (ARCOs) that model the ARC of the hypothalamus. Previous studies have generated 2D hypothalamic-like neurons and 3D hypothalamic organoids from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). However, no protocols previously existed to generate hypothalamus nucleus-specific organoids.
Read more about this work from Guo-li Ming‘s lab in Penn Medicine News.