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Stem cell biology

Modeling the complexity of mammary gland in vitro

Nature Methods volume 20, pages 1879–1880 (2023)Cite this article

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A new method models mammary gland in vitro during physiological and pathological conditions.

The work of Yuan and colleagues describes a new approach to convert the roundish and unorganized cellular structures obtained by the previous methods into multibranched, bilayered organoids able to undergo alveolar differentiation (Fig. 1c). The first step is to generate a primordial sphere that resembles the mammary placode, which is the first morphological features during MG embryonic development2, by isolating adult basal cells (BCs) and culturing them on Matrigel. These primordial colonies lack proper apicobasal polarity and usually cease to grow after reaching a certain size (Fig. 1c).

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Fig. 1: Cellular composition and structural complexity of mammary gland in vivo and in vitro.

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Acknowledgements

C.B. is supported by the WEL Research Institute, FNRS, TELEVIE, EOS FNRS/FWO and the European Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Stem Cells and Cancer, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium

    Marco Fioramonti & Cédric Blanpain

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  1. Marco Fioramonti
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  2. Cédric Blanpain
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Correspondence to Cédric Blanpain.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Fioramonti, M., Blanpain, C. Modeling the complexity of mammary gland in vitro. Nat Methods 20, 1879–1880 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-023-02064-x

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