Human-Derived Brain Organoids Create Functional Networks in Mice
By transplanting human brain organoids into mice, researchers created a new in vivo platform that could advance the study of human neural functions and drug testing. Originally written by Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga, PhD, on Sep 16, 2026 Researchers created a new transplantation mouse model that shows extensive connectivity between human-derived brain organoid cells (green and red) and the mouse host brain (blue). Image credit: Pasca lab, Stanford University. (CC BY 4.0) F or over a decade, Stanford University neuroscientist Sergiu Pasca has looked for strategies to study human brain functions and its disorders. In Pasca’s eyes, using human induced pluripotent stem cells to create human-derived brain organoids—three-dimensional, self-organized tissues grown in a dish—and transplanting them into rodent hosts is an opportunity to achieve this goal. In a study published in Nature , his team described a new mouse model into which they transplanted human-derived ne...