The development of anatomy: from macroscopic body dissections to stem cell-derived organoids.

Anatomy as a descriptive topic of research and instruction in medicine has been increasingly influenced by discoveries in molecular cell and developmental biology and most recently the advent of human induced pluripotent stem cells and organoids. We summarize here how anatomy has been influenced by developmental and stem cell biologists, and how in vitro modelling of the three-dimensional body environment is emerging to understand structure and function of cells during differentiation processes in development and disease.