In this conversation, Dr Paola Bonfanti joins us to discuss recent work done by her group to reconstitute the human thymus outside of the human body, using cultured cells and a scaffold.

We also discuss how the thymus develops, educates T cells, and how single-cell sequencing and spatial information are changing our understanding of the organ.

Paola trained as a doctor in Milan, before training as a stem cell scientist at institutes in California and Switzerland. She now leads a research group at the Crick Institute in London that investigates tissues such as the thymus, and the pancreas in the context of their stem cell and epithelial cell biology.