Application and prospects of high-throughput screening for in vitro neurogenesis

Figure 1 Main protocols and applications of in vitro neurogenesis. Neurons can be generated in vitro through the differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells or the transdifferentiation of somatic cells with the aid of transcription factors, growth factors or small molecules[51,131]. With the combination of 3D biomaterials, induced neurons can be applied in various fields, including modeling, drug screening, neural tissue engineering and regenerative medicine[213,232,276]. iPSCs: Induced pluripotent stem cells.

Figure 2 Procedures for 3D microenvironment screening. The mixture of neural cells and 3D biomaterials is printed through a microarrayer and subsequently spotted on the substrate of microarrays or micropillars. Then, culture medium is added to the microarray, and the micropillar is stamped into the microwell containing culture medium, including various combinations of growth factors and chemicals.

Figure 3 Summary of high-throughput screening platforms and their functions. Cell-free, cell-based and organoid-based HTS platforms can screen out target small molecules, genes, biomaterials and microenvironments to promote the survival, proliferation, differentiation and maturation of pluripotent stem cells, induce the transdifferentiation of somatic cells to other cell types, and even generate specific organoids for further applications, including disease modeling, development modeling, drug screening, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. High-throughput screening (HTS) platforms include multiwell plates, microarrays and microfluidic chips, indicating the great potential in HTS in future studies. HTS: High-throughput screening; ECM: Extracellular matrix.