Dr. Thomas Vierbuchen is Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In this episode, he talks about using PSCs to model neurodevelopmental processes. He also discusses his direct reprogramming work and his lab’s recent study on OTX2 in gastrulation. (42:02)

Restoring Function After Spinal Cord Injury: In a non-human primate model of spinal injury, researchers grafted ESC-derived spinal cord neural stem cells and improved forelimb function. (2:00)

Improving HSC Expansion: Inhibiting ferroptosis augments the expansion of HSCs ex vivo. (11:40)

Cardiomyocytes and Macrophage Reprogramming: Injury-induced Clusterin+ cardiomyocytes promote neonatal heart regeneration by reprogramming macrophages. (21:27)

Bone Marrow Organoids: A 3D in vitro bone marrow model captures phenotypic, structural, and functional features of human endosteal bone marrow niches. (33:03)

Image courtesy of Dr. Thomas Vierbuchen

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Dr. Sumru Bayin is a Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge. She talks about her work on regeneration in the neonatal mouse cerebellum and how cerebellar interneurons differentiate. She also discusses organizing a workshop to facilitate collaborations in regenerative biology, and her memories of the late Sir John Gurdon. (40:30)

Heart-Macrophage Assembloids – Human heart–macrophage assembloids enable the study of immune–cardiac interactions and the modeling of arrhythmias. (1:41)

Human Nucleus Basalis Organoids – Human nucleus basalis of Meynert organoids can fuse with human cortical organoids and are used to model neurodevelopmental disorders. (11:15)

A Brain Organoid Atlas – Scientists used iPSCs from patients with neurodevelopmental disorders to generate a brain organoid atlas. (20:19)

Human Cortex Development – Lineage tracing in human tissue samples provides insight into lineage relationships between cortical cell types. (28:03)

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Dr. Juan Melero-Martin is an Associate Professor and the Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital. His lab uses bioengineering principles to understand how vascular networks are formed and the mechanisms by which the vasculature modulates the engraftment and activity of various human stem cells. (42:03)

Chromosomal Genes Linked to Heart Disease – Scientists identified HMGN1, a nuclear binding protein, as a key contributor to trisomy 21-related congenital heart defects. (1:46)

Questioning Common Technique for Assessing IVF Embryos  – Live imaging of late-stage preimplantation human embryos suggests that abnormalities can arise at a later stage of development than previously thought. (14:14)

Vitamin C Protects Ovaries – Scientists have shown that oral vitamin C protects against ovarian aging in primates. (24:07)

Multi-Branching Cell Differentiation Trajectories – A new Hodge Laplacian model has advanced single-cell multimodal data analysis by providing highly reliable results for complex multi-branching trajectories. (33:58)

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Juan Melero-Martin.

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Dr. Carole LaBonne is the Erastus Otis Haven Professor of Molecular Biosciences at Northwestern University. Her lab studies the genesis of neural crest stem cells at the level of the signaling pathways and transcription factors that comprise the neural crest gene regulatory network. They also study how these mechanisms contribute to exit from pluripotency and the subsequent lineage restriction of neural crest cells to their derivative cell types that collectively define vertebrates. (39:45)

Creating Modified Cows and Sheep from Haploid Stem Cells – Scientists have successfully derived haploid androgenetic ESCs from cattle and sheep, and have developed a novel method to generate offspring from these cells. (4:33)

Embryonic Stem Cells from Birds – Researchers have succeeded in deriving and maintaining authentic ESCs from chickens and seven other bird species. (13:48)

Mutation Hotspots Reveal Spermatogonia Clonal Growth – As men age, harmful genetic mutations in sperm not only accumulate but are also favored during sperm production, giving them a reproductive advantage. (20:35)

Canine iPSC Technology – Researchers have established culture conditions for canine iPSCs. (31:10)

Photo Reference: Courtesy of Dr. Carole LaBonne

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Dr. Paul Tesar is the Director of the Institute for Glial Sciences and the Dr. Donald and Ruth Weber Goodman Professor of Innovative Therapeutics at Case Western Reserve University. His lab uses PSCs to model neurological development and disease with a specific focus on oligodendrocytes and astrocytes. He talks about his work on oligodendrocyte maturation, advancing research into the commercial and clinical sectors, and mentoring the next generation of scientists. (42:17)

Spatially Patterned Kidney Assembloids – Genome-edited kidney progenitor assembloids recapitulate hallmarks of human autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease. (5:50)

Transposable Elements Controlling Cell Fate – This study highlights the role of transposable elements as mechano-response enhancer elements that control human cell fate and gene expression. (13:54)

Cardiac Injury Recovery – Targeting a remote injury response in a non-cardiomyocyte cell type rapidly promotes post-myocardial infarction recovery of non-regenerative hearts. (22:47)

Intestinal Fibrosis in Crohn’s Disease – A mouse model of creeping fat recapitulates key features of Crohn’s disease strictures. (31:40)

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Dr. Lars Velten is a Group Leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona. He talks about his research on cell-state-specific enhancers in hematopoiesis and lineage tracing techniques to study blood aging. He also discusses combining generative AI with wet lab techniques and the advantages of risk-taking in basic research. (40:41)

HSPC Aging in Space – Spaceflight reduces telomere maintenance and HSPC self-renewal. (1:50)

Modeling Myelin Repair – Brain organoids with integrated microglia enabled the investigation of demyelination and remyelination. (14:45)

Gastric Cancer Organoids – CRISPR screens with human tumor organoids revealed metabolic dependencies and synthetic lethal pairs. (25:55)

Gastroids to Model Stomach Development – This study reveals a principle for instructing gastric patterning and provides a platform for advancing knowledge of stomach organogenesis. (33:10)

Image courtesy of Dr. Lars Velten

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Dr. Alice Soragni is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. She talks about her work on patient-derived organoids and how they can be adapted for drug screening. She also discusses how she transitioned from structural biology to research on protein aggregation and rare diseases, and the current social media landscape for scientists. (45:20)

Optogenetic Control of Morphogen Production – Researchers established a model that recapitulates Sonic hedgehog-mediated patterning of the vertebrate neural tube. (4:17)

Oligodendrocyte Maturation – Reducing SOX6 levels unlocks oligodendrocyte maturation and myelination. (15:45)

CAR T Therapy for Kidney Disease – Targeting extracellular matrix-producing cells with CAR T therapy is a therapeutic strategy for chronic kidney disease. (24:44)

Lung Xenotransplantation – A lung from a gene-edited pig was transplanted into a brain-dead human recipient. (35:00)

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Dr. Zhongwei Li is an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California. His lab focuses on kidney organogenesis with translational applications of kidney regeneration and disease modeling. He talks about his work on PSC-derived nephron progenitors and drug discovery applications for polycystic kidney disease. (40:12)

Chemically Induced Embryo Founder Cells: A small-molecule-only approach was used to induce mouse embryonic stem cells into embryo founder cells, which generated a mouse embryo model. (1:45)

Transgene-Free Embryo Models: Scientists generated transgene-free stem cell-based embryo models solely from mouse naïve PSCs. (13:25)

Hypoimmune CAR T Cells: Allogeneic hypoimmune CAR T cells do not induce an immune response in patients. (21:15)

Reconstructing PSC-Islets: PSC-islets comprising all five endocrine subtypes were reconstructed and transplanted into mice. (32:03)

Image courtesy of Dr. Zhongwei Li

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Dr. Mark Hatley is an Associate Faculty Member and Director of the Division of Molecular Oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His research focuses on the developmental origins and genetic mechanisms of pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma. He talks about his work on pediatric oncology and the mechanisms that differentiate normal development from cancer. He also discusses the role of PAX3-FOXO1 and DICER1 in tumorigenesis. (37:50)

Transplanting Allogeneic Beta Cells – Researchers transplanted genetically modified allogeneic donor islet cells into a man with long-standing type 1 diabetes. (1:37)

Pig Liver Xenotransplantation – RNA sequencing highlights how innate immune cells may affect thrombotic and immune pathways after liver xenotransplantation. (12:03)

Chemical Reprogramming – A new method generates hCiPS cells from both cord blood and adult peripheral blood cells. (21:10)

T Cell Development – Soluble Notch agonists support T cell development in suspension bioreactor culture. (27:30)

Image courtesy of Dr. Mark Hatley

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Dr. Jeanne Loring is a Co-Founder of Aspen Neuroscience and Professor Emeritus at Scripps Research. She talks about generating gametes from the functionally extinct northern white rhinoceros, Aspen’s early days and its recent clinical trial results for Parkinson’s cell therapy, and sending her own stem cells into space. She also discusses the need for genetic variation in iPSC lines. (46:23)

Lack of Evidence for Transitional Cerebellar Progenitors – New analysis of single-cell RNA sequencing refutes the existence of transitional cerebellar progenitor cells. (1:50)

Organoid Vascularization – Vascularized organoids resemble human fetal lung and intestine features. (17:05)

Metabolic Profiling of HSPCs – Researchers presented the integrated metabolome, lipidome, and transcriptome of human adult HSPCs upon differentiation, aging, and acute myeloid leukemia. (28:40)

Blood Vessels in Liver Organoids – Scientists generated liver organoids that contain fully perfused human vessels with functional sinusoid-like features. (37:00)

Image courtesy of Dr. Jeanne Loring

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