ESPE Yearbook of Paediatric Endocrinology

EMBO Rep. 2020;21:e50612. doi: 10.15252/embr.202050612.This zebrafish study identified and molecularly characterized adult transcriptionally different thyrocyte subpopulations even within the same follicle.It is well established that within a thyroid gland, follicles are heterogenous concerning functional activity. More active follicles are characterized by a high co...

Brief summary: Exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals may have adverse effects on humans. Tissue specific organoids are a helpful model to study organ specific impact of compounds alone or in combination, at different doses and during different stages of tissue development (1). While such organoid models have been developed for different tissues, such models were lacking to study differentiated thyroid follicles and thyroid tissue during development and differentiation.</p...

Brief summary: In recent years, generation of human organoids of different tissues from human embryonic stem cells have been realized, e.g. intestine, liver, and lung among others. In contrast, so far all attempts to generate fully mature and functional human thyroid follicular cells from stem cells was not successful. Romitti et al. present for the first time successful generation of transplantable and functional human thyroid organoids derived from human embryonic s...