O-173 Gastruloids: a pluripotent stem cell model of gastrulation and body plan engineering in development and disease

Gastrulation is the process whereby the mass of cells that results from fertilization is shaped into the body plan of an organism. Understanding this process in humans is important as the origin of several syndromes and birth defects, map to this period. However, addressing this period experimentally is difficult due to technical, and more importantly, obvious ethical constrains. Over the last few years, alternatives to study gastrulation have emerged from the realization of the self-organizing abilities of Pluripotent Stem Cells and led to a number of cellular models of the early stages of mammalian development. I will discuss these models, with a special focus on gastruloids, highlighting their strengths as well as their limitations.