Regenerative Medicine Current Lecture

Upgrading the Physiological Relevance of Human Brain Organoids

The Fall 2026 Regenerative ​Medicine Lecture will be presented as a webinar on Thursday, November 12^th at 6 pm. Registration is required to attend. Dr. Giorgia Quadrato will be presenting this seminar.

Registration:

Registration is required to attend; following registration, you will receive a link to access the webinar. Register Here

Lecture Summary:

Human brain organoids are self-organizing three-dimensional structures that emerge from human pluripotent stem cells and mimic aspects of the cellular composition and functionality of the developing human brain. They represent an emerging model with great potential to be an optimal in vitro system to watch, perturb, and mechanistically understand human brain development and polygenic neurodevelopmental diseases. Despite their impressive self-organizing capacity, organoids lack the stereotypic structural anatomy of their in vivo counterpart, making conventional analysis techniques underpowered to assess cellular composition and gene network regulation in organoids. Advances in single cell transcriptomics have recently allowed characterization and improvement of organoid protocols, as they continue to evolve, by enabling identification of cell types and states along with their developmental origins. In my lab, we combine the use of this emerging model of the human brain with large-scale single-cell omics technologies to identify cell type-specific disease mechanisms, and above all, new treatments for human neurodevelopmental disorders.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Quadrato is an Associate Professor in USC's Department of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and Director of the USC CIRM ASCEND Shared Resource Laboratory, which provides organoid models, analytical services, consultations, and specialized training. She received the 2019 Baxter Foundation Faculty Scholar Award, 2020 Mallinckrodt Foundation Early Career Faculty Award, and 2022 Broad Innovation Award. Since 2024, she has served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Syngap Research Fund and Quiver Bioscience.

Presented by the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the Center for Science and Math Success, the Regenerative Medicine Lectures are funded through a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) grant in collaboration with the UC Davis Stem Cell Program. This webinar is free and open to the public.

For questions or more information about the Regenerative Medicine Lecture series, contact Robin Altman at altman@csus.edu.