Credit: Humphreys lab
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified rouge cells – namely brain and muscle cells – lurking in kidney organoids, an indication that the “recipes” used to coax stem cells into becoming kidney cells inadvertently are churning out other cell types. The researchers also demonstrated they could prevent most of those wayward cells from forming, an approach that could be adopted by scientists working with other organoids, such as those of the brain, lung or heart. The image shows brain neurons in red and kidney cells in green.