Schedule 

AGENDA

Day 1 will be a full day of guest and trainee talks with a wine and cheese reception in the evening and will also include lunch for registered participants.

Days 2 & 3 will consist of instructor-led hands on best practices in the culture and manipulation of stem cells, and their preparation for neural organoid generation. We will also highlight characterization approaches and techniques for stem cells and their derivatives.

Day 4 will introduce students to organoid-focused scRNA seq dataset analysis (advance preparation required).

Nikon imaging specialists will provide microscopy demos and tutorials to complement the hands-on sessions over days 2 - 4.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided on all days.

INVITED SPEAKERS AND TOPICS

• Brian Ballios, Krembil Research Institute (UHN)

"Retinal Organoids as Models of Pathogenesis and Therapies for Inherited Retinal Disease"

• Thomas Durcan, McGill University 

"Applications of Brain Organoids in Studying Brain Disorders"

• James Ellis, The Hospital for Sick Children 

"Rett Syndrome and Neurodevelopment: From Transcriptional Buffering to Reverberating Neural Networks"

• Deborah Kurrasch, University of Calgary 

"Using Human Brain Organoids to Model Pediatric Epilepsy"

• Emily M. Lee, NIH 

"Brain Region Specific Spheroids for HTS Drug Discovery: from Neurodegenerative Diseases to Neurotropic Viral Infections"

• Carol Schuurmans, Sunnybrook Health Sciences

"Using Cerebral Organoids to Assess Differences in Human vs. Murine Neurogenesis"

• Karun Singh, Krembil Research Institute (UHN) 

"3D Neural Organoid and Assembloid Models to Study Neurodevelopmental Disorders"

TRAINEE TALKS

• Dana El Soufi El Sabbagh, PhD Candidate

Ana Andreazza & Peter Carlen labs

"Mitochondrial Enhancers for Neuropsychiatric Diseases"

• Margaret Ho, PhD Candidate

Molly Shoichet lab

"Transplantation of Human Photoreceptors Isolated From Stem Cell-Derived Retinal Organoids to Investigate Material Transfer"

• Rehnuma Islam, PhD Candidate

Cindi Morshead lab

"Of Mice and Man: Defining the Neural Stem Cell Lineage in Human Cerebral Organoids"

• Tiger Jian, PhD Candidate

Laurence Pelletier lab

"Engineered Blood Vessels for Modeling Vascular Development and Vascularizing Organoids"

• Sofia Melliou, PhD 2023

Phedias Diamandis lab

"Generation of Cell-Type Specific Proteomes From Human Cerebral Organoids Reveals Understudied Candidates of Neurodevelopment and Disease"

• Andy (De) Yang, PhD Candidate

Stephane Angers lab

"Making Midbrain Organoids with Designer Wnt Agonists"