Andersen Lab
Principal Investigator: Jimena Andersen
Institution: Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
Project Summary Region-specific brain organoids derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) provide a tractable platform to study disease mechanisms in a human cellular context. Moreover, organoids have the capacity to generate a diversity of cell types that can be maintained in culture long-term and assembled in vitro to form physiologically relevant connections. However, despite this exciting potential, the high variability of organoid differentiation across and within hiPSC lines have halted their broad utility and significantly hindered biological and technical interrogations of human neural development reproducibly and at scale. To address these challenges, this MPI group has established the Brain Organoid Hub at Emory University. A primary goal for the hub, and for this proposal, is to understand the underlying biology of progenitor cells that contribute to variability in 3D neural cultures. Additionally, we hope to develop metrics of hiPSC biology (molecular and/or morphological) that accurately predict the likelihood of successful organoid differentiation, as well as attributes of young organoids that correlate with robust molecular and functional maturation…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R01MH140260-01A1: hiPSC and Progenitor Heterogeneity as Predictors of Variability in 3D Human Neural Differentiation (2026)
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