Promises and pitfalls of cerebral organoids as tools in neuroscience

Organoids are a new, revolutionary technology that allows to study the development of the anatomy and physiology of any organ in 3D in vitro. These cultures are generated from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in virtue of their property of self-reproducing and self-organizing, through the use of specific matrices. The great revolution brought by this technique consists in the possibility of replacing in vivo experiments at a large extent. In fact, organoids can be used in many research fields such as drug screening, transplantation and personalized medicine. This thesis focuses on the analysis of brain organoids and aims to propose an in-depth analysis of the feasibility and the reliability of organoids, through the analysis of two articles that investigate the involvement of brain organoids in the study of brain development and, in addition, a third one which reports an example of application in Parkinson's disease.