Microfibrous Scaffolds Guide Stem Cell Lumenogenesis and Brain Organoid Engineering

3D organoids are widely used as tractable in vitro models capable of elucidating aspects of human development and disease. However, the manual and low-throughput culture methods, coupled with a low reproducibility and geometric heterogeneity, restrict the scope and application of organoid research. Combining expertise from stem cell biology and bioengineering offers a promising approach to address some of these limitations. Here, melt electrospinning writing is used to generate tuneable grid scaffolds that can guide the self-organization of pluripotent stem cells into patterned arrays of embryoid bodies. Grid geometry is shown to be a key determinant of stem cell self-organization, guiding the position and size of emerging lumens via curvature-controlled tissue growth. Two distinct methods for culturing scaffold-grown embryoid bodies into either interconnected or spatially discrete cerebral organoids are reported. These scaffolds provide a high-throughput method to generate, culture, and analyze large numbers of organoids, substantially reducing the time investment and manual labor involved in conventional methods of organoid culture. It is anticipated that this methodological development will open up new opportunities for guiding pluripotent stem cell culture, studying lumenogenesis, and generating large numbers of uniform organoids for high-throughput screening. A scaffold-based platform to increase the throughput, reproducibility, and geometric control of 3D organoids is presented. Melt electrowriting is used to generate fibrous scaffolds that guide the self-organization of pluripotent stem cells into a large array of suspended interconnected or discrete organoids. Tuning the geometry of the scaffold enables to control the shape and lumen formation of the emerging tissues.image

Automated summary

3D organoids are widely used in vitro models for studying human development and disease. However, the current culture methods have limitations in terms of reproducibility and geometric control. A new approach combining stem cell biology and bioengineering is presented, using melt electrospinning writing to generate grid scaffolds that guide the self-organization of pluripotent stem cells. This method allows for high-throughput generation, culture, and analysis of organoids, reducing the time and labor involved in traditional methods.