Background and Purpose

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A recent surge in support for microphysiological systems (MPS) in drug development has put a spotlight on human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived technologies to improve clinical translation. One of the most attractive aspects of hiPSC-derived models is their scale and compatibility with high-throughput screening (HTS), though this requires high sample-to-sample reproducibility to be effective. Traditional neural spheroid models typically combine terminally differentiated neuronal subtypes and glia, enabling precise control of cellular ratios and regional specification of brain identity.

Alternatively, neural organoids utilize hiPSCs as starting material thereby permitting differentiation into a variety of neuronal subtypes, though often at the cost of high variability in size and cell composition between organoids. To this end, 28bio has developed CNS-3D Brain Organoids. This hiPSC-derived cortical organoid technology uses a scalable batch production process which yields a co-differentiated mixture of key neural cell populations aligned with human neurodevelopment. Here we present the advantages of using CNS-3D Brain Organoids and traditional spheroid approaches when performing in vitro neuromodulation assays.