Morphodynamics of Human Early Brain Organoid Development

Professor Akanksha Jain

Assistant Professor for Neural MorphoGenomics, Department of Molecular Life Sciences, University of Zurich

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Akanksha Jain studies the developmental dynamics that shape the human brain and how these processes are dysregulated in disease. She has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich since January 2026, where she leads the Neural Morphogenomics Lab in the Department of Molecular Life Sciences. Before this, she held a research position at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich from 2019 to 2025.

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Dr. Andrea Boni

Market Segment Director - HRM, Leica Microsystems

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Andrea Boni studied Biotechnology at the San Raffaele University in Milan before completing his PhD at the EMBL laboratory in Heidelberg, where he worked on microscopy screening of membrane nuclear protein dynamics. He then transitioned to work on light-sheet development and imaging of intestinal organoids. In 2017 Andrea co-founded Viventis Microscopy, where he was responsible for the imaging applications and sales. After the integration of Viventis Microscopy with Leica Microsystems he joined Leica in May 2024 as Business Excellence Director. He has been Market Segment Director - HRM since 2026

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See how long-term light-sheet imaging and multi-mosaic labeling reveal the dynamic cellular behaviors and ECM-driven organization that shape early human brain organoid development.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how:

• Long-term light-sheet imaging enables multi-scale insight into organoid development
• Morphological transitions in brain organoids are tightly linked to gene regulatory changes
• Extracellular matrix (ECM) is a critical regulator of organoid organization and brain regionalization

Discover how morphology, cell behavior, and gene regulation coordinate during human brain development. In this webinar, you’ll explore how long-term light-sheet microscopy and multi-mosaic labeling can be used to track dynamics in iPSC-derived brain organoids.

Despite variability among organoids, key developmental transitions, like lumen formation, follow consistent paths. You’ll see how single-cell data link developmental changes to ECM and mechanosensing genes, highlighting ECM-driven WNT and Hippo signaling in early brain organization.

This session will show how ECM promotes proper polarization, lumen formation, and telencephalic identity, while its absence leads to disorganized structures and altered cell fates.

To conclude the webinar, Dr. Andrea Boni will present the new imaging option for cleared samples of the Viventis Deep Dual View Light Sheet Microscope. He will explain how the Viventis Deep can be used for 3D live imaging and cleared sample imaging simply by exchanging the objective block.