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Artificially grown organoids are becoming increasingly important in scientific and medical research. Now, scientists have measured activity similar to real brain waves in brain organoids grown in the lab while looking for a genetic disease that causes seizures.
Such organoids may be useful for research into brain development, disease, and potential therapies, as they may be involved in experiments that simply would not be possible with a living human brain.
In the new study, the researchers reported patterns of electrical activity closely corresponding to a seizure in brain organoids developed from the stem cells of patients with Rett syndrome – a genetic condition that can lead to seizures in some cases.
“This work demonstrates that we can make organoids that look like real human brain tissue and can be used to accurately mimic certain features of human brain function and disease,” says neuroscientist Bennett Novitch, University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
To create organoids, scientists induce cells taken from humans to turn into pluripotent stem cells, a type of cell that develops in a wide variety of tissues and organs.
The process is especially difficult in the brain because there is so much going on. To be useful for more types of research, in addition to organizing all of these neurons, these “mini brain” organoids must also develop the same neural oscillations that occur in the human brain – waves similar to those associated with the human brain. learning, sleep, etc.
Now, these waves have been spotted, increasing the likelihood that organoids can replace real brains in experimental research. In many neural diseases, the brain cells themselves look good – it’s the oscillations that indicate something is wrong.
Using electrical probes and microscopic readings, the researchers gave their newly created organoids something similar to an electroencephalogram (EEG), revealing several types of neural oscillations.
“I hadn’t anticipated the range of oscillation models that we would see,” says Novitch. “By learning to control the patterns of oscillation that an organoid exhibits, we could potentially model different brain states.”
In the case of the abnormal oscillations seen in organoids developed in people with Rett syndrome, the addition of the investigational drug Pifithrin-alpha suppressed the signs of seizures – so these organoids are also able to “respond” to treatment. . All along, the brain cells themselves looked normal, which is also the case with Rett syndrome.
This is another step forward for the technology and science of brain organoids, which continue to advance at a rapid pace. Just last week, we saw a study describing how eye structures evolved in a lab-grown mini brain, for example.
While brain organoids will never match the complexity or details of the real brain, they could potentially replace animals in future studies, as long as we are sure these specially developed clumps of cells are close enough to what is actually going on. in the brain.
“This is one of the first tangible examples of drug testing in action in a brain organoid,” says neurologist Ranmal Samarasinghe of UCLA.
“We hope it will serve as a springboard for a better understanding of the biology of the human brain and diseases of the brain.”
The research was published in Neuroscience of nature.
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