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Science in Real Time (ScienceIRT) podcast serves as a digital lab notebook—an open-access, conversational platform that brings the stories behind cutting-edge life science tools and techniques into focus. From biologics to predictive analytics and AI-powered innovation, our guests are shaping the future of therapeutic discovery in real time.
Welcome back to Science in Real Time. I'm Carli Reyes and this is BioScopes, your weekly lens on biotech breakthroughs. Each week we explore three to five of the biggest stories shaping the field, from AI screening tools to new cell models to the imaging platforms that capture it all. This month's lineup really captures the convergence of biology and technology with a special look into organoid biology. Today, we'll be covering kidney organoids that mature on the same nine month timeline as human pregnancy, brain organoids revealing a surprising role in immune cells, A powerful AI called CellForge that builds virtual cells And finally, heart Organoids that sprout their own vascular networks.
Carli:Each story highlights how discovery is becoming not just faster but more predictive and realistic. Let's dive in! First off, scientists have grown tiny human kidney models that don't just look like kidneys, they actually grow like them. The first long term fetal kidney organoid system. Most lab grown organoids develop too fast, like they are on fast forward, but these fetal kidney organoids unfold step by step over months on almost the same timeline as a baby developing in the womb.
Carli:And that's a very big deal because it means that researchers can finally watch kidney development play out in real time. They can see how stem like starter cells gradually turn into the many parts of the kidney, from filtering units to tubules that reabsorb water and salts to even the supporting cells that hold the whole structure together. And here's the twist, when the team blocked a key signal called Notch, think of it as a molecular switchboard, the whole system broke down. The starter cells started to pile up and while some tubules still form, the proximal tubules which are essential for detox and nutrient recovery simply didn't appear. High resolution cell analysis confirmed that those cells never flipped the genetic switch to become proximal tubules.
Carli:The big takeaway of this is that Notch acts like a gatekeeper of kidney development, and these organoids let us watch that gate open and gate close in real time. It's not just about growing tissue in a dish, it's really about modeling human organ growth with a level of accuracy we've never had before. And that gives scientists a brand new way to study birth defects, uncover the genetic programming running during pregnancy, and even testing how medicine might affect the developing kidney. In short, these organoids aren't just mimicking the shape of a kidney, they're actually capturing its tempo and its logic. A new window into how our organs take shape one week at a time.
Carli:Next up, we have scientists at UCSF use brain organoids, tiny mini brain as they call them, grown from cell cells to uncover a hidden role for microglia, the immune cell of the brain. Most of the time, we think of microglia as the janitors of the nervous system. They patrol the brain, clear away debris, and protect against infection. But in this human's organoid, they were doing something unexpected. Instead of cleaning, they were actually building, releasing a growth factor called IGF-1 that helps drive the production of inhibitory interneurons.
Carli:Inhibitory interneurons may not sound very glamorous, but they are incredibly crucial. They keep brain activity balanced preventing circuits from becoming too excitable. And without enough of them, or if they don't develop properly, things go off kilter. And that imbalance has been tied to conditions like epilepsy, autism, and even schizophrenia. What the team found was striking.
Carli:When microglia were present, more progenitor cells, the brain stem like starter cells, multiplied and matured into this inhibitory interneurons. When microglia were blocked from releasing IDF-1, that expansion stalled. In other words, microglia weren't just supporting brain development on the sidelines, they were actively shaping how many inhibitory neurons the human brain was going to build before birth. And here's the twist, this doesn't play out the same way in mice. Mouse microglia in the same brain region don't produce IGF-1, and deleting IGF-1 from them doesn't change interneuron development.
Carli:That makes this uniquely human, a uniquely human mechanism, one we wouldn't have discovered without organoid models that capture early brain development step by step. And the big takeaway is this: Microglia aren't only the brain's immune guardians. In the human brain at least, they double as growth promoters, expanding the pool of neurons that help keep circuits in check. That reframes how we think about healthy brain wiring and it opens a new lens on disorders where that balance is lost. Next up, into the AI frontier.
Carli:A new system called CellForge is letting scientists build predictive, virtual cells. Yes, digital models that simulate how living cells would respond to gene edits, drugs, or signaling molecules, all without lifting a pipette. And here's how it works. Instead of one big algorithm, CellForge uses a multi agent AI framework. Think of it like a team of digital specialists if you will.
Carli:One agent focuses on the biology, another one on the data, another one on the coding, and then they come together, debate, propose, critique, and refine strategies until they converge on a model that best describes the science. So give it raw single cell multiomics data and a research question, and CellForge outputs a trained model, essentially a virtual cell you can experiment on in silico. And in head to head tests across six datasets, CellForge consistently outperforms current state of the art tools, sometimes by very large margins. That means sharper predictions for how cells behave under perturbations, from gene knockouts to drug treatments. And most importantly, it is open source.
Carli:You can find it on GitHub on the link below. So think of it this way, if a lab notebook records what you've done, SelfForge is more like a digital copilot. It runs parallel simulations, suggests what to test next, and takes some of the trial and error out of discovery science. For researchers, that could mean faster insight, in a more direct path from data to discovery. And finally, to the heart.
Carli:Stanford scientists have built the first vascularized human organoid, mini hearts and mini livers with their own branching blood vessels. Here's how they did it. Starting with pluripotent stem cells, the team used micro patterning and a carefully tuned mix of growth factors. That cocktail coax the cells into gastruloid based organoids that didn't just beat like a heart, but also sprout hollow luminized vessels running through them. The results?
Carli:A mini heart that look and function like an embryo at about six-and-a-half weeks, complete with endocardial, myocardial, epicardial, and even neuronal cell types. And the same recipe worked in liver organoids showing that the vascular program is conserved across organs. One key insight, the vascularization depends on Notch and BMP signaling, pathways that act as gatekeepers for vessel growth. Why does this matter? Lack of vasculature is one of the biggest roadblocks in organoid research.
Carli:Without vessels, tissues can't grow large, they can't stay healthy, or they can't really fully mimic human development. Now, scientists can actually watch early vasculature biology play out in real time, something impossible to study directly in human embryos. So think of it this way, for drug testing, especially for cardiotoxicity, these vascularized organoids could act like living safety screens, and in the long run, it can open the door to personalized medicine, testing treatments on a vascularized mini heart built from your own cells before they even reach the clinic. What ties these breakthroughs together isn't just the discoveries themselves, it's the infrastructure behind them. These aren't just gadgets, they become a biological sandbox, a place where scientists can test ideas rapidly, ethically, and at scale.
Carli:Ten years ago, building a vascular organoid, tracking microglia in human brain development, or even simulating a virtual cell would have been completely out of reach. Today, they are kinda starting to feel almost routine. And that's the quiet story behind the headlines, a convergence of tools turning biology into something you can actually iterate on, almost like code. And it's not meant to replace wet lab science, it's meant to amplify it, giving researchers the ability to move faster, fail smarter, and see even farther away. So, you may be asking what's next?
Carli:If this month's stories tells us anything, it's that organoid research, AI, and high content imaging are starting to move from proof of concept to platforms. The coming years will likely be about scale scaling up organoids so that they're larger, more vascularized, and closer to full tissue scaling AI models so that they can handle more complex biology and scaling access so that these tools aren't just specialized in labs but a part of a standard scientific toolkit. And that raises even bigger questions. How will regulators adapt to data generated in silico? How do we ensure models are representative of diverse human biology?
Carli:And how do we balance speed with responsibility when the tools themselves are evolving so quickly? Those are the questions that we'll keep exploring here in BioScopes, because the breakthroughs are exciting, but the road ahead, the "how", and the "where this takes us" is just as important. And that's a wrap for this week's Bioscope. You can find links to all the studies and news articles in the show notes. Next week we'll take you behind the scenes of science funding in our special segment, Funding Focus.
Carli:If you've been enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a colleague who loves science as much as you do. Until next time, I'm your host Carli Reyes, thanks for listening and have a wonderful day!