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Review
. 2023 Jan;19(1):104-113.
doi: 10.1007/s12015-022-10462-5. Epub 2022 Oct 29.

Gastruloids: A Novel System for Disease Modelling and Drug Testing

Atoosa Amel #  1 , Simoné Rossouw #  1 , Mubeen Goolam  2   3
Affiliations
Review

Gastruloids: A Novel System for Disease Modelling and Drug Testing

Atoosa Amel et al. Stem Cell Rev Rep. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

By virtue of its inaccessible nature, mammalian implantation stage development has remained one of the most enigmatic and hard to investigate periods of embryogenesis. Derived from pluripotent stem cells, gastruloids recapitulate key aspects of gastrula-stage embryos and have emerged as a powerful in vitro tool to study the architectural features of early post-implantation embryos. While the majority of the work in this emerging field has focused on the use of gastruloids to model embryogenesis, their tractable nature and suitability for high-throughput scaling, has presented an unprecedented opportunity to investigate both developmental and environmental aberrations to the embryo as they occur in vitro. This review summarises the recent developments in the use of gastruloids to model congenital anomalies, their usage in teratogenicity testing, and the current limitations of this emerging field.

Keywords: Early development; Gastruloids; Patterning; Self-organisation; Stem cells; in vitro 3D embryo models.

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References

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