High-content screening of organoids reveals the mechanisms of human pancreas acinar specification
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells have emerged as powerful models to study human development. To investigate signaling pathways regulating human pancreas differentiation and morphogenesis, we developed a high-content, image-based screen and quantitative multivariate analysis pipelines robust to heterogeneity to extract single-cell and organoid features using pancreatic progenitor organoids. Here, we identified 54 compounds affecting cell identity and/or morphological landscape. Focusing on one family of compounds, we found that glycogen synthase kinase 3α/β (GSK3A/B) inhibition via wingless/int-1 (WNT) signaling has a reversible effect on cell identity, repressing pancreatic progenitor markers and inducing a poised state in progenitors transitioning to acinar cells. We show that additional fibroblast growth factor (FGF) repression enables further differentiation of acinar cells, recapitulating pancreatic acinar morphogenesis and function. The ability to produce acinar cells is valuable for future studies on pancreatic exocrine function and cancer initiation in humans, as acinar cells are thought to be an important cell of origin for pancreatic adenocarcinoma.
Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 325-339.e8 |
| Journal | Cell Stem Cell |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 21 Jan 2026 |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Feb 2026 |
| Peer-reviewed | Yes |
External IDs
| PubMed | 41570824 |
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Keywords
Sustainable Development Goals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- acinar differentiation, high-content drug screening, human pancreas organoids, image analysis, organoid morphology, pancreas development, WNT