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Building the human inner ear in an organoid

Nature Biotechnology volume 35, pages 518–520 (2017)Cite this article

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Inner ear organoids will facilitate disease studies and drug screening.

The inner ear has held its secrets closely. A delicate membranous labyrinth surrounded by a dense temporal bone, it has proved to be a challenging target for both basic research and therapeutic intervention. In this issue, Koehler, Hashino and colleagues1 report that certain features of the human inner ear can be modeled in vitro using organoids—simple, miniature versions of normal organs that can arise from cultured stem cells grown under conditions that provide cues present during development in vivo. The successful derivation of human inner ear organoids opens the door to a better understanding of ear development in our species. This, in turn, will aid drug screening approaches seeking treatments for hearing and balance disorders.

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Figure 1: A comparison of human inner ear development and the formation of inner ear organoids.

Debbie Maizels/Springer Nature

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vidhya Munnamalai and Donna M. Fekete are in the Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.,

    Vidhya Munnamalai & Donna M Fekete

Authors
  1. Vidhya Munnamalai
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  2. Donna M Fekete
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Correspondence to Donna M Fekete.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Munnamalai, V., Fekete, D. Building the human inner ear in an organoid. Nat Biotechnol 35, 518–520 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3899

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