Making human skin in a dish

Extensive efforts are being made to develop culture systems that allow human skin to be grown in vitro. However, such systems generally fail to produce tissues of the same complexity as human skin, with the tissues usually being restricted to simple layers of epidermal and dermal cells. Here, the authors report the generation of skin organoids from human pluripotent stem cells, which when cultured for 4–5 months develop complex structures such as hair follicles, sebaceous glands and sensory neural circuits. Notably, when grafted onto the skin of immunocompromised mice, the authors find that these organoids are able to form patches of human hair-bearing skin. Together, this work constitutes a major advance in skin bioengineering, and provides a valuable tool for the study of skin development and disease, while bearing strong potential for skin reconstructive therapy.