George Hall

Many thanks to the UCL Translational Research Office @ucltro.bsky.social for inviting me to give a talk "High-resolution quality control in new cells and tissues using single-cell and spatial transcriptomics" at their Advanced Therapies Symposium 2026. (1/9)

[1] "An in vivo and in vitro spatiotemporal profile of human midbrain development", Nature Communications (2026), with Dimitri Budinger, @paupuigdevall.bsky.social, Manju Kurian, Serena Barral. (8/9)

[2] "Functional integration of an autologous engineered esophagus in a large-animal model", Nature Biotechnology (2026), with Natalie Durkin, @marcopll.bsky.social, @paolodecoppi.bsky.social. [3] Manuscript under preparation - watch this space, with Leilani Hoffmann and Sergi Castellano. (9/9)

Finally, it's always a pleasure to hear from colleagues at @uclchildhealth.bsky.social and @greatormondst.bsky.social about the fantastic work they are doing to develop innovative treatments for some of the rarest yet most severe diseases in the world. (5/9)

It's always vital to keep this end goal in mind as we work in the sometimes more abstract world of method development. Thanks again all - see you next year! #UCL2026AdvTx #CellTherapy #GeneTherapy #TranslationalResearch #AdvancedTherapies #Biotech #AI #AIforBiology (7/9)

Also showed how we can use artificial intelligence to automate and improve our bioengineering processes [3]. (3/9)

Lots of insightful discussions with people from industry working across drug discovery, development, regulation, and funding - very pleased to see interest in this approach from all areas! (4/9)

It was a nice opportunity to present our work on how we can use spatial transcriptomics to assess the quality of lab-grown tissues, whether they be organoid models of disease [1] or manufactured organs themselves [2]. (2/9)

George Hall reposted

Rita Strack

@ritastrack.bsky.social

nature.comFunctional integration of an autologous engineered esophagus in a large-animal model - Nature BiotechnologyA tissue-engineered esophageal segment is functional in minipigs.

this paper got us talking today! In a good way www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comFunctional integration of an autologous engineered esophagus in a large-animal model - Nature BiotechnologyA tissue-engineered esophageal segment is functional in minipigs.

Proud to be second author on "Functional integration of an autologous engineered esophagus in a large-animal model", out now in Nature Biotechnology (www.nature.com/articles/s41...). In it, Paolo De Coppi and team created lab-grown oesophagi that integrated and grew inside pigs.

Related to this work but on the computational side of things, Sergi Castellano and I are working towards developing a general ML framework for the automated quality control of bioengineered tissues and organs by predicting their development following transplantation.

Key challenge is estimating future changes of complex spatial features from data with very few, very high dimensional training instances. I believe such methods have potential to help many people - please get in touch with me if this sounds like something that interests you!

nature.comFunctional integration of an autologous engineered esophagus in a large-animal model - Nature BiotechnologyA tissue-engineered esophageal segment is functional in minipigs.

I analysed developing structure of the organs with spatial transcriptomics, showing they become increasingly similar to biological oesophagi after transplant. This was the first time that lab-grown organs have been profiled using spatial transcriptomics.

Very proud also to see this work receiving coverage in the media (BBC News: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article..., Sky News: news.sky.com/story/first-...).

helsinki.fiNew study maps human midbrain development and validates stem cell models for disease research | HiLIFE – Helsinki Institute of Life Science | University of HelsinkiThe study provides the most detailed spatiotemporal profile to date of early human midbrain development, offering a powerful new reference for neuroscience and regenerative medicine.

18 Mar

A nice write-up of a paper where I am co-first author (published in Nature Communications last month - www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM)@fimm-uh.bsky.social

A study from @hkilpinen.bsky.social's lab provides the most detailed spatiotemporal profile to date of early human midbrain development, and validates stem cell models for disease research, offering a powerful new reference for neuroscience and regenerative medicine. www.helsinki.fi/en/hilife-he...

4 Feb

New blog post! A basic introduction to git for those that have never used it before: ghall.co.uk/blog/2026/in.... Focuses on getting started with version control and worrying about best practices later. Perfect is the enemy of good!

ghall.co.uk My configuration files | George Hall My personal site!

16 Jan

I've started a blog! First few posts are things where I often share with colleagues my approaches - sharing online in the hope they are useful to others! Post #1: My .bashrc, .inputrc and .vimrc configuration files: ghall.co.uk/blog/2025/co...

ghall.co.uk How to check whether two directories are identical | George Hall My personal site!

16 Jan

Blog post #2: How to verify that two directories are identical using checksums. Essential if copying large, expensive datasets, for example: ghall.co.uk/blog/2025/ve...