At the invitation of the journal Current Opinion in Neurobiology, researcher Wang Xiaoqun, from the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, wrote and on Oct 30 published the paper "Modeling brain development and diseases with human cerebral organizations".

In the review, Wang summarized recent advances in the development of brain organoid technology and discussed the limitations, applications and future prospects of this promising field.

The paper introduces the application of brain-like organs at the present stage from two aspects: simulating the development of the human nervous system and simulating abnormal diseases of the nervous system.

Understanding the mechanisms that underlie human brain development and neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders is one of the key topics of neurobiology. Because of poor accessibility to human and non-human primate brain tissues, the current perception and understanding of human brain development has mainly been derived from the studies of rodents.

However, some human-specific features of neural development cannot be well characterized by these animal models. Thanks to advances in stem cell technologies, brain organoids are undergoing rapid development and are showing promising applications in decoding human brain development and uncovering the pathology of brain diseases.

As an emerging research field, brain organoids are developing rapidly with each passing day. This paper is expected to arouse the interest of more readers in brain organoids and will help them gain a comprehensive and better understanding of this field.