Thyroid Gland Organoids: Current Models and Insights for Application in Tissue Engineering

The incidence of treatment of thyroid disease and consequential hypothyroidism has been increasing over the past few years. To maintain adequate thyroid hormone levels, these patients require daily supplementation with levothyroxine for the rest of their lives. However, a large part of these patients experiences difficulties due to the medication, which causes a decrease in their quality of life. Regenerative medicine through tissue engineering could provide a potential therapy by establishing tissue engineering models, such as those employing thyroid-derived organoids. The development of such treatment options may replace the need for additional hormonal replacement therapy. This review aims to highlight the current knowledge on thyroid regenerative medicine using organoids for tissue engineering and to discuss insights into potential methods to optimize thyroid engineering culture systems. Finally, we will describe several challenges faced when utilizing these models. Impact statementHypothyroid patients require lifelong thyroid hormone replacement. However, many of these patients experience complications due to therapy-induced symptoms, which decrease their quality of life. Using tissue-derived organoids to engineer thyroid tissue as a form of regenerative medicine may in the near future provide treatment options for hypothyroidism. Here, we present current models of thyroid organoids and thyroid engineering systems. In addition, potential insights into how these models might be optimized for future applications are discussed, and finally, some challenges that remain to be overcome are addressed.