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Researchers Grow ‘Mini Human Brain’ In A Lab
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Researchers at Ohio State University have grown the world’s first mini human brain in a petri dish.
The brain ‘organoids’, which are 2 millimeters long, are pieces of human tissue grown in petri dishes from skin cells. They may help researchers to test drugs and eventually cure some of the most devestating diseases of our time.
Wisn.com reports:
In addition to Parkinson’s disease, autism and Alzheimer’s disease, they could also lead to unlocking the mysteries of schizophrenia, epilepsy, traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. Millions of people suffer from all these disorders and diseases worldwide.
“The idea of taking skin cells, reverting them back to a basic stage of development and then teaching them how to turn into the cells that make up the brain is something we have been dreaming about for some time,” said CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “It is exponentially closer to reality now. Furthermore, the idea of using these ‘mini brains’ as a testing ground for therapies could help doctors figure out the best treatments for individual patients as opposed to the ‘one size fits all’ approach that is often used nowadays.”
Scientists have been making brain tissue organoids in the lab for less than a decade.
Japanese scientists were among the first to prompt cells from mice and humans to form “layered balls reminiscent” of a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex, according to the science journal, Nature. In 2011, Madeline Lancaster, a scientist a the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, was able to grow an embryonic brain.
Ohio State biomedical researcher Rene Anand said his team’s work is different because “our organoids have most of the brain parts.”
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2015/10/researchers-grow-mini-human-brain-in-a-lab/
