It should be acknowledged that the development of the culture conditions that were established by scientists working on organoids (as originally defined) has contributed to the significant advances reported in the stem cell field in the last 10 years. Independently of the methods used to generate the organoids and keep them in culture, these advances represent outstanding model systems to study human development and disease. For many organs, such as the brain, mouse and human development are not the same (Lancaster et al., 2013). Moreover, induced pluripotent stem cells derived from skin fibroblasts as well as 3D cultures of normal and diseased human organs offer models for human diseases that are not easy to study in animal models (Lancaster et al., 2013). Additionally, developing screening platforms based on human organoids may provide a more cost-effective and precise preclinical setting for drug discovery in the long term.
