Ali H. Brivanlou

This study shows human blastoids undergo gastrulation upon in vitro attachment, replicating the transcriptomic signature of natural human gastrula and suggesting an earlier onset of gastrulation than previously thought.

The paper identifies EOMES as a key mediator of WNT priming in human embryonic stem cells, enabling subsequent Activin-induced mesendodermal differentiation.

This study investigates YAP's role in early ectodermal specification and its link to Huntington's Disease using human neuruloids, finding YAP activation influences ectodermal fate and that reducing YAP activity can partially rescue HD phenotypes.

The paper uses light-induced SHH signaling to self-organize human dorsal-ventral forebrain structures from hESCs and validates this with scRNA-seq.

This study shows that HTT-CAG expansion in human gastruloids causes ectodermal compartment reduction and altered TGFβ signaling due to polarity defects, indicating early developmental HD effects.

The paper shows that NOGGIN and BMP4 are secreted into opposite extracellular spaces in human epiblasts, with NOGGIN inhibiting BMP4 through apical-to-basal transcytosis.

This paper describes a platform to generate human lung buds from stem cells that mimic lung development and are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, revealing alveolar cell vulnerability and potential therapeutic targets.

The paper models primitive streak formation in human embryonic stem cells using a WNT signaling system and shows that DKK1 controls patterning extent and duration.

The paper uses human gastruloids to create a partial fate map of the human primitive streak by analyzing cell migrations and subpopulation organization under different signaling conditions.

The paper shows that WNT signaling memory enables ACTIVIN to act as a morphogen in human gastruloids by allowing graded responses to ACTIVIN without altering SMAD2 dynamics.

The paper generates a 3D human epiblast model to study axial symmetry breaking, showing BMP4 induces symmetry breaking through WNT3 and DKK1.

The paper shows that WNT and ACTIVIN signals can induce a functional human organizer in hESCs, characterized by PS formation and EMT markers, and demonstrate its ability to contribute to a secondary axis in chick embryos.