CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing of Cerebral Organoids to Model Microcephaly

Cerebral organoids have proven themselves to be physiologically relevant models to study neurodevelopmental disorders such as microcephaly. Dr. Madeline Lancaster has previously shown that cerebral organoids derived from a microcephalic patient have defects that mimic the debilitating in vivo condition.* In this virtual poster presentation, Leon Chew discusses his work gene editing cerebral organoids to model microcephaly. Chew will walk you through how he used CRISPR-Cas9 to generate a mutated hPSC cell line, characterized the stable clones for cell quality attributes, and differentiated the cells to cerebral organoids. The resulting cerebral organoids were smaller and had defects in neuronal development similar to data from Lancaster et al.*

Leon Chew is a Scientist at STEMCELL Technologies, overseeing the development of cerebral organoid products.

*Lancaster MA et al. (2013) Cerebral organoids model human brain development and microcephaly. Nature 501(1): 373–9.