Flora Vaccarino studies mammalian brain development. As pioneers in the field of 3D brain organoids, her team has generated an extensive collection of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines derived from patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which could be essential for personalized medicine.
With support from the Kavli Institute, the Vaccarino lab has recently focused on engineering brain organoids using gradients of signaling molecules present in the developing body, creating a reproducible topography of cell identities and mimicking more closely human early neural development (2020 Kavli Innovative Award, Flora Vaccarino & Andre Levchenko).
Her lab is also studying cell lineages in human development. Somatic mosaicism, the accumulation of mutations in cellular genomes after fertilization, has known biological consequences and is a potential source of differences in developmental trajectories between individuals. Dr. Vaccarino’s lab used deep sequencing technologies of genomes of clonal iPSC lines to quantify somatic mosaicism in many human cell types and tissues, including the human developing brain, and revealed unequal contributions of daughter cells during development. Their studies have paved the way for comprehensive and large-scale analyses of early lineages and understanding their role in human health and disease.