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Frontiers in Biological Sciences Lecture |
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Biomedical Research Building Auditorium (BRB 105) |
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Hosted by the Department of Neurosciences |
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Paola Arlotta, PhD
"Human brain organoids as avatars to understand human brain disease" |
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Abstract: Much remains unknown regarding the mechanisms governing mammalian brain development. Focusing on the cerebral cortex, I will present data on the mechanistic principles that control the developmental generation of cellular diversity in the embryo and consider to what extent processes of cortical development can be replicated outside the embryo, within brain organoids. I will then consider how genetic and environmental factors affect the human developing brain to ultimately cause disease. Emerging evidence indicates that similar disease risk factors are associated with distinct phenotypic outcomes depending on genomic context; such that different individuals show heterogeneous responses to negative stimuli. I will discuss progress in developing human brain organoids that are capable of reproducible, multi-donor development of the forebrain (we have named such organoids: “Chimeroids”), and their use to investigate inter-individual variation in cellular responses to neurotoxic triggers associated with neurodevelopmental disease.
Bio: Dr. Arlotta is a principal faculty member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In 2024 Dr. Arlotta was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Medicine for pioneering work on the development and application of powerful stem cell-based models of the human brain, brain organoids, and for her foundational contributions to understanding processes of human brain formation and human neurological disease.
Dr. Arlotta’s lab explores the interface between the development and engineering of the neocortex, to gain fundamental understanding of both the principles that govern normal cortical development and of previously inaccessible mechanisms of human neurodevelopmental disease. Focusing on the developing cerebral cortex, the Arlotta lab has had a long-standing interest in discovering the mechanistic principles that govern the establishment and maintenance of cellular diversity and its integration into working networks that subserve cortical function.
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