Self-organized pituitary-like tissue from mouse ES cells
The possibility that functional, three-dimensional tissues and organs may be derived from pluripotent cells, such as embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), represents one of the grand challenges of stem cell research, but is also one of the fundamental goals of the emerging field of regenerative medicine. Developmental biology has played a central role in informing such efforts, as it has been shown that stem cell differentiation can be directed to follow a given lineage pathway by culturing stem cells in conditions that recapitulate the specific cellular and molecular environment from which such cells normally emerge during embryogenesis. Intriguingly, recent work has shown that when ES cells are cultured under the appropriate conditions, they can be driven to self-organize into complex, three-dimensional tissue-like structures that closely resemble their physiological counterparts, a remarkable advance for the field.