Meritxell Huch est une biologiste de renommée internationale spécialisée dans la biologie des cellules souches et le développement de modèles d’organoïdes 3D, qu’elle utilise pour décrypter les mécanismes fondamentaux de la régénération tissulaire et des maladies humaines, notamment du foie, de l’estomac et du pancréas. Après un doctorat en biologie à l’Université de Barcelone, elle s’est rapidement distinguée par des travaux pionniers menés durant son post-doctorat aux Pays-Bas, avant de diriger sa propre équipe au Gurdon Institute à Cambridge.

Son excellence scientifique a été saluée par de nombreuses distinctions prestigieuses et par sa nomination comme directrice au Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, où elle conduit aujourd’hui une recherche de pointe à l’échelle internationale.

Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus, vous pouvez écouter son interview sur la régénération hépatique dans « The Stem Cell Podcast ».

🕧 Vendredi 13/03/2026 à 11h30 | Amphi 12
🧫 Tissue-Derived Organoids: Where We Stand and Where We Go

Résumé (en anglais) :

In vitro 3D organoid cultures are emerging as novel systems to study tissue development, organogenesis, and stem cell behavior ex-vivo. Organoids are multicellular structures that (1) self-assemble and can be clonally expanded, (2) resemble the corresponding tissues-of-origin, and (3) allow the study of some aspects of tissue development and tissue physiology in a dish.

Over the past decade, we have developed organoid cultures from healthy and diseased, human and mouse, adult and embryonic tissues for a range of organs including stomach, liver and pancreas. These, have allowed, for the first time, the long-term expansion of adult (stomach, liver and pancreas) tissues in a dish, thus defying the Hayflick limit, by which only cancer cells with aberrant ploidy and unstable genomes would expand in culture.

Here, I will present our organoid work and summarize our findings on how this culture sys­tem is amenable for the study of adult tissue regeneration and disease across different biologi­cal scales. At the cellular scale, we have recently found that heterotypic cellular interactions between stromal and epithelial cells dictate the behavior of the liver epithelia, thus reconciling the apparent dichotomy between a pro-regenerative and a pro-quiescent stromal niche. At the molecular scale, we have found that a transient, genome-wide remodeling, of the cells’ epige­nome (DNA methylome/hydroxymethylome), licenses adult differentiated liver cells to reprogram into bi-potent liver progenitors, both during organoid initiation and in vivo, follow­ing tissue damage. Our results indicate that adult tissue derived organoid cultures represent novel, reductionist in vitro models, that enable gaining mechanistic understanding of basic biological principles of human tissue regeneration and cancer.