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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Stem-cell culture moves to the third dimension

Human stem cells are yielding 3D miniature tissues that can be used to study both normal human biology and human disease in vitro.
  1. C. Y. Tachibana

    1. C. Y. Tachibana is a freelance science writer in Seattle, Washington.

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Stem-cell researcher Toshiro Sato places a culture dish under the microscope in his laboratory at Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo. What he sees is not a sheet of cells, but something more complex — delicate spheres of tissue that are barely visible to the naked eye. These are organoids, 3D structures that develop when stem cells are given the proper environmental conditions to differentiate and arrange themselves into forms with properties similar to those of particular tissues or organs.

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Nature 558, 329-331 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05380-x

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