Tissue Engineered Organoids for Neural Network Modelling

The use of cells as building materials provides a powerful tool to the fields of both regenerative medicine as a broad aspect and in particular to tissue engineering, with the potential to deliver a tremendous amount of information both in vivo as cellbased therapies and/or in vitro as cell models. Combining cells with specialized biomaterials, suitable biochemical growth/ differentiation factors, extracellular matrices (‘scaffolds’) and diverse biomimetic environments creates a myriad of opportunities for extensive study of tissues in both physiological and pathological forms, and the creation of strategies for regenerating damaged tissues [1,2]. Due to the complexity of living tissue, with multiple cell types acting in synergy to give the whole tissue its function, there are many efforts to model tissues in vitro. For the most part such modelling aims strike a balance between the ability to create functional tissue structures and the simplification in the complexity observed in vivo. Organoids have been highlighted as one of the major advances in developing suitable models for various specific tissue types. Amongst these are intestine [3], lung [4-6] and kidney [7,8], to name a few. Further models of heart, cartilage and skin, as well as functional systems such as the vascular, endocrine, musculoskeletal, and nervous systems have been reviewed by Benam et al. [9]. Bodyand human-on-a-chip systems further aim to draw connectivity between each of these separate models in order to mimic basic physiological function on a larger scale. [10,11].