**6. Summary and outlook**

In spite of several long-term efforts to employ biomaterials to improve the physiological relevance of stem cell-derived spinal motor neurons *in vitro*, the resulting cells are still far from representing accurate reflections of their native counterparts in many physiological respects *in vivo*. We believe the core problem lies in the fact that we do not currently have the necessary tools to enable us to recapitulate the dynamic flux of morphogens continuously occurring near the neural tube during the developmental process. One attractive candidate for helping to achieve this goal is micro- and nanotechnology that generates 3D scaffold with high cavity of reservoir for target morphogen loading with a controllable release rate and concentration for longer period of time *in vitro*. By virtue of having established production protocols for those biomaterials with highly tunable porous structure and surface properties, we believe such materials have great potential to function as a morphogen-releasing source that facilitates the establishment of *in vitro* environments corresponding more closely with those of the notochord and paraxial mesoderm.

In conclusion, the use of biocompatible materials has great promise to address a current roadblock in iPSC-neuron research, namely, the accurate recapitulation of native spinal neuron development in culture. Conversion into a 3D culture environment that incorporates materials of similar mechanical and physical properties to those of native extracellular matrices holds great potential to improve current neurodevelopment modeling. More importantly, future efforts to recapitulate the unique morphogen supply schemes present at different stages of spinal cord development in human embryos would help overcome one of the most challenging issues in producing reliable neural tissue models from iPSC-derived spinal neurons.

### **Acknowledgments**

This work was supported by a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare (HI19C1095), and by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (RS-2023- 00209822), Republic of Korea.

*Exploring the Potential for Biomaterials to Improve the Development of Spinal Motor Neurons… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113275*
