Boroviak Group

Thorsten Boroviak

Dr Thorsten Boroviak

Primate Embryogenesis

Email: teb45@cam.ac.uk     |     Departmental affiliation: Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, Centre for Trophoblast Research

Research

Plain English: The Boroviak lab focuses on how embryonic cells organise themselves to form the most complex lifeforms, such as human and non-human primates.

They follow primate embryonic cells through parts of their journey to provide insights into human development. Their approaches include simultaneous genetic and epigenetic high-throughput sequencing from single cells, embryonic stem cell culture and bioengineering of stem cell-based embryo models.

A deeper understanding of primate development is vital for innovative treatments of implantation failure, infertility and cancer as well as clinical applications of stem cell biology.

Research Focus: 

Embryo implantation, gastrulation and organogenesis

The first signs of the human body axis can be traced back to the second week of gestation. To get to this point, the blastocyst implants and establishes a small sheet of cells, the embryonic disc. Deeply embedded within extraembryonic tissues, the embryo undergoes a reorganization process termed “gastrulation”, which transforms the embryonic disc into three germ layers and determines the entire future body plan.

Most knowledge on mammalian gastrulation is based on mouse, but human embryogenesis differs in anatomical architecture, timing, molecular configuration and sequence of cell-fate decisions. For instance, in human and non-human primates, the implanting epiblast polarises into a rosette, gives rise to amnion and forms a flat EmDisc. Rodent embryos form amnion later in development, after gastrulation.

Research goals

The central aim of the Group's research focuses on delineating the molecular crosstalk between the human embryonic disc and extraembryonic signalling centres, which control the sequence of cell-fate allocation in the primitive streak. To understand how these signalling centres emerge, we need to elucidate how extraembryonic lineages are specified in primate postimplantation development.

The Boroviak Group was the first to reveal the molecular landscape in primate embryos between implantation and gastrulation in vivo (Bergmann et al., Nature 2022). They developed epiblast- and amnion-spheroid cultures using microfluidics (Schindler et al., Stem Cell Reports 2021; Munger et al., Development 2022) and pioneered computational approaches, including spatial-identity-mapping, to determine the identity of in vitro cultured cells. Their ongoing work involves micropatterning, blastoids, microfluidics and bioprinting to emulate human and non-human primate development in stem cell-based embryo models.

The results from the work will be critical to understand human implantation failure, how errors in gastrulation can lead to congenital malformations and how germ layers are patterned for organ formation.

Marmoset blastocyst

Marmoset blastocyst stained with markers of the three lineages: epiblast, hypoblast and trophoblast.

Marmoset embryonic stem cells

Epiblast-like marmoset embryonic stem cells

Publications: