The thymus, a crucial organ for adaptive immune response, produces T cells that attack invaders.
With age and certain diseases, the thymus degrades, affecting immunity.
Scientists from the University of Florida have grown functional thymus organoids from human stem cells for the first time, potentially aiding the development of patient-specific therapies for thymic dysfunction.
Although previous models could produce T cells, they lacked the negative selection process, vital for eliminating potentially harmful T cells.
The new organoids generate T cells more closely resembling a real human thymus’ function.
The team will work on improving negative selection and T-reg production, while advances in blood cell precursor generation should enhance the model’s utility.