Riccardo De Santis

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.

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 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.