A few months before the 2013 Sasai team paper, Madeline Lancaster and Juergen Knoblich of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna and U.K. colleagues demonstrated their more freewheeling, landmark approach to
growing brain organoids (SN: 9/21/13, p. 5).
The researchers produced induced pluripotent stem cells from skin cells from Miller - Dieker patients, from which they then
grew brain organoids.
Scientists at Harvard University
grew their brain organoids, also from stem cells, longer than ever before: nine months or more.
Not exact matches
Researchers hope the
organoids will be better than lab animals or cells
growing in culture at revealing how the human
brain develops, both normally and when things go awry, and identify potential therapeutic or genome - editing targets.
Implanting human
brain organoids in a mouse
brain gives them everything they need to
grow and develop.
The Salk team therefore took human
brain organoids that had been
growing in lab dishes for 31 to 50 days and implanted them into mouse
brains (more than 200 so far) from which they had removed a tiny bit of tissue to make room.
Wrinkles began to form in the outer layers of the
organoids about six days after the mini
brains started
growing.
Cells inside the
brains contract, while cells on the outside
grow and push outward, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, discovered from working with the lab -
grown brains, or
organoids.
Scientists we sent Anand's poster presentation to said that although the team has indeed
grown some kind of miniature collection of cells, or «
organoid», in a dish, the structure isn't much like a fetal
brain.
The only way the team can be sure they have
grown the equivalent of a fetal
brain would be to genetically test individual cells from different regions of the organoid, and compare them to those of human fetus, says Christof Koch at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Sea
brain would be to genetically test individual cells from different regions of the
organoid, and compare them to those of human fetus, says Christof Koch at the Allen Institute for
Brain Science in Sea
Brain Science in Seattle.
Blood flow would make arrays of
brain organoids more likely to survive,
grow, and develop.
That is necessary if the
organoids are to
grow bigger, probably the only way they can mimic fully
grown brains and show how disorders such as autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia unfold.
These micro quasi-brains are revolutionizing research on human
brain development and diseases from Alzheimer's to Zika, but the headlong rush to
grow the most realistic, most highly - developed
brain organoids has thrown researchers into uncharted ethical waters.
Scientists can't yet
grow spare parts of the human
brain to fix neurological injuries or defects, but they have recently used stem cells to create
brain organoids, formations of cells that mimic some of the
brain's regions.
So the group
grew new
organoids, this time bearing the same mutations carried by babies with smooth
brain syndrome.
According to his unpublished findings, when he puts glioblastoma cells from patients into lab dishes with
brain organoids, the cells attach to the surface of the
organoids, burrow into them, and within 24 to 48 hours
grow into a mass that eventually «looks exactly like what happened in the patient's own
brain,» Fine said.
In the years since the 2013 debut of human
brain organoids, research groups have worked to
grow bigger
brain tissue clumps and more uniform structures.
For another, the tumors in the
brain organoids «mimic how far and how fast» the patient's own cancer
grew, «and how destructive it was,» Fine said.
«For example, there is a huge amount of interest and excitement globally in
growing cerebral
organoids» — miniature
brain - like organs that can be studied in laboratory experiments — «from stem cells to model human
brain development and disease mechanisms.
Scientists at the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn applied a recent development in stem cell research to tackle this limitation: they
grew three - dimensional
organoids in the cell culture dish, the structure of which is incredibly similar to that of the human
brain.
For example, to understand why a fetal
brain sometimes doesn't reach full size, a condition called microcephaly, the researchers
grew organoids using iPS cells derived from a person with the condition.
To
grow larger
brains, the stem cells would also have to differentiate into blood vessels to supply nutrients to the
growing organoid.
Stem cell technology has advanced so much that scientists can
grow miniature versions of human
brains — called
organoids, or mini-
brains if you want to be cute about it — in the lab, but medical ethicists are concerned about recent developments in this field involving the growth of these tiny
brains in other animals.
Brain organoids, also known as mini-brains, are tiny clumps of brain cells grown from stem cells that researchers are using to investigate the neural underpinnings of autism and other neurological disor
Brain organoids, also known as mini-brains, are tiny clumps of
brain cells grown from stem cells that researchers are using to investigate the neural underpinnings of autism and other neurological disor
brain cells
grown from stem cells that researchers are using to investigate the neural underpinnings of autism and other neurological disorders.
Blood (red) flows through newly
grown blood vessels in a human
brain organoid (green) implanted in a living mouse.
The second used
brain organoids, which are often referred to as miniature
brains growing in petri dishes, but are actually just bundles of human tissue that have some features of the early human
brain in the first trimester.
Blood (red) flows through newly
grown blood vessels in a human
brain organoid (green) implanted in a living mouse.ABED AL FATTAH MANSOUR, SALK INSTITUTEMouse
brains make nice homes for human
brain organoids, researchers report today (April 16) in Nature Biotechnology.
Gage's team used human pluripotent stem cells to develop
brain organoids, which were
grown in culture for 40 to 50 days.
Star - shaped support
brain cells, astrocytes,
growing in 3 - D «
organoids» in a dish develop similarly as those in human
brain tissue.
In the
organoids that Lancaster had derived from a healthy person, the growth of the hindbrain slowed as the forebrain
grew — reflecting what happens as a normal human fetal
brain develops.
Organoids grown from the cells of a patient carrying the gene for severe microcephaly, however, didn't
grow as large because those
brain regions didn't develop properly.