Brain-building Organoids

During embryonic development and early infancy, progenitor cells called radial glia are busy producing most of the brain’s neurons and mature glial cells. So critical are radial glia that disturbances to their function have been associated with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia. These cells can also reemerge much later in life within brain cancers. Understanding the signals affecting the development and maturation of radial glia could thus offer insights into a wide range of brain disorders. Recent studies using assembloids like the one pictured – created from thalamic (green) brain region and cortical (red) brain region stem cells – revealed that radial glia (white) require physical connections from thalamic neurons to mature. Other studies have shown that specific metabolic profiles influence particular fates of radial glia. Together such studies are beginning to build a picture of how these critical cells shape the brain during normal development and disease.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image from work by Claudia Nguyen and colleagues, Aparna Bhaduri Lab
• Department of Biological Chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Image originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Science, September 2026