Xufeng Xue, PhD

As a biomedical engineer, I’m passionate about applying fundamental knowledge to develop new technologies that will help us better understand the world. Integrating engineering and stem cell biology allows me to contribute meaningfully to the organoid field.

I want to contribute to the organoid field through technical innovations. Specifically, I would like to develop novel bioengineering techniques, such as microfluidics, to guide stem cell differentiation and morphogenesis to build human organoids with high reproducibility and complexity. Then, I would like to use these organoids to tackle important questions in human development and developmental disorders that are challenging to study using other methods.

One of my significant contributions is the development of the first fully patterned human neural tube organoid (Xue et al., Nature, 2024). In this work, I developed a microfluidic device that allows us to precisely control human stem cells' chemical and mechanical environments. Utilizing this microfluidic device, I developed the completely patterned human neural tube organoid recapitulating key development landmarks, including patterned expression of canonical rostral-caudal and dorsal-ventral regional markers, and the emergence of isthmic organizer, neural crest cells and neuromesodermal progenitors. In the future, leveraging this spatially patterned neural tube organoid, my research group is interested in further developing next-generation neural organoids with improved interregional interactions and functional neural circuits. We are also interested in studying neural developmental disorders by integrating spatially organized neural organoids with CRISPR screening and single-cell sequencing.

I’m honored to have received the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) Merit Award (2024), the Biomedical Engineering Society-Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (BMES-CMBE) Postdoctoral Researcher Travel Award (2023) and the Rising Star in Engineering in Health from Johns Hopkins and Columbia University (2022). My research has been published in prestigious journals, such as Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Science Advances, Cell Stem Cell and Developmental Cell. I have been a researcher for over 11 years and began working at Cincinnati Children’s in 2024.