Engrafting human cortical organoids

Human cortical organoids provide models for studying human brain development and disease, but limited intracranial space and interactions with existing neural circuits can restrict their growth and integration following transplantation into rodents. Writing in Nature, Kaganovsky and colleagues describe xenocortication, a transplantation approach for integrating human cortical organoids into the mouse brain.

The authors transplanted human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cortical organoids into the cortical cavity of neonatal immunodeficient ‘apallial’ mice, in which most of the neocortex and hippocampus had been genetically depleted. Magnetic resonance imaging showed that the grafts grew approximately 4.7-fold between 2 and 3 months after transplantation and accounted for nearly 92% of the combined cortical tissue volume.

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