Generation of Functional Thyroid from Embryonic Stem Cells

Recently, embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have been intensively used for studying the development of several lineages, tissues and organs as well as their physiology. In addition, ESCs have been considered as an alternative model system for modelling congenital diseases. Because of the difficulty to study the development of the thyroid gland, in several mammalian and non-mammalian models, pluripotent stem cells have been used to generate an alternative model to highlight and uncover morphogenetic events and new genes involved in the correct thyroid organogenesis. In this chapter, I will firstly focus on how embryonic stem cells can be used to study organogenesis of different organs and, concerning thyroid field, what the different steps are that lead to the generation of functional thyroid tissue from pluripotent stem cells. I will then propose how the ESC-based tool generated by Sabine Costagliola and colleagues would be used as model to understand new insights of thyroid development, new genes and how the generation of functional thyroid tissue from pluripotent stem cells opens a new avenue in the finding of new treatments for hypothyroidism.SCOPUS: ch.binfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Heterogeneity of Stem Cells in the Thyroid

Identification of thyroid stem cells in the past few years has made important contributions to our understanding of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that induce tissue regeneration and repair. Embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced-pluripotent stem cells have been used to establish reliable protocols to obtain mature thyrocytes and functional follicles for the treatment of thyroid diseases in mice. In addition, the discovery of resident thyroid progenitor cells, along with other sources of stem cells, has defined in detail the mechanisms responsible for tissue repair upon moderate or severe organ injury.In this chapter, we highlight in detail the current state of research on thyroid stem cells by focusing on (1) the description of the first experiments performed to obtain thyroid follicles from embryonic stem cells, (2) the identification of resident stem cells in the thyroid gland, and (3) the definition of the current translational in vivo and in vitro models used for thyroid tissue repair and regeneration