Washington : Scientists, including one of Indian origin, have developed tiny 3D ‘mini-brains’ that mimic some of the human brain’s structures and functionality and can be used to study diseases such as Alzheimer’s and autism. The creation of these ‘mini-brains’ could dramatically change how new drugs are tested for effectiveness and safety, researchers said, reports PTI.
Performing research using these balls of brain cells that grow and form brain-like structures on their own over the course of eight weeks should be superior to studying mice and rats because they are derived from human cells instead of rodents, they said.
“While rodent models have been useful, we are not 150-pound rats. And even though we are not balls of cells either, you can often get much better information from these balls of cells than from rodents,” said study leader Thomas Hartung, professor at Johns Hopkins University in US.
“We believe that the future of brain research will include less reliance on animals, more reliance on human, cell-based models,” he said. Researchers, including Anupama Kumar of John Hopkins University, created the brains using what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).
These are adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state and then are stimulated to grow into brain cells. The brains can be used to study Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and even autism.
These mini-brains are very small – at 350 micrometres in diameter, or about the size of the eye of a housefly, they are just visible to the human eye – and hundreds to thousands of exact copies can be produced in each batch.
