Gastruloids enable modeling of the earliest stages of human cardiac and hepatic vascularization

Monitoring the steps of mammalian development is challenging at best and often impossible to do in human embryos. Organoids made from human-derived cells offer a tractable alternative, but they often lack key cell types that are present in an intact organism and may not properly mimic the cellular microenvironment seen during physiological development. By testing numerous differentiation conditions, Abilez et al. developed a method of culturing human pluripotent stem cells that differentiated into vascularized cardiac and hepatic organoids. These vascularized organoids could be used for studying cardiac and hepatic development and for addressing more immediately practical questions, such as the impact of drug exposure on human organ development. —Yevgeniya Nusinovich