Reverse engineering liver buds through self-driven condensation and organization towards medical application

The self-organizing tissue-based approach coupled with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology is evolving as a promising field for designing organoids in culture and is expected to achieve valuable practical outcomes in regenerative medicine and drug development. Organoids show properties of functional organs and represent an alternative to cell models in conventional two-dimensional differentiation platforms; moreover, organoids can be used to investigate mechanisms of development and disease, drug discovery and toxicity assessment. Towards a more complex and advanced organoid model, it is essential to incorporate multiple cell lineages including developing vessels. Using a self-condensation method, we recently demonstrated self-organizing "organ buds" of diverse systems together with human mesenchymal and endothelial progenitors, proposing a new reverse engineering method to generate a more complex organoid structure. In this section, we review characters of organ bud technology based on two important principles: self-condensation and self-organization focusing on liver bud as an example, and discuss their practicality in regenerative medicine and potential as research tools for developmental biology and drug discovery.