HumBO

HumBO is a hiPSC core facility hosted by Inserm and Université Paris Cité dedicated to the study of normal and pathological human neurodevelopment using brain organoids.

The HumBO facility of the NeuroDiderot UMR1141 research unit uses the technology of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPS) in order to model normal and pathological human brain development and to generate neural progenitors, postmitotic neurons and glial cells in monolayer cultures (2D) or within spheroids and organoids (3D).

With almost 90 billions neurons, the human brain fundamentally differs from that of other species not only because of its size and the high number of its neuronal connections, but also through the tremendous expansion of its cortex, the kind of progenitors involved in its growth, the time required to achieve its expansion and maturation and the activation of human-specific genes. Key steps of brain development are critical to the cognitive outcome of the future child and constitute potential windows of vulnerability targeted either by pathogens or by genetic mutations.