OSU scientist grows tiny brain to study diseases

Scientists at Ohio State University said they’ve grown a almost complete human brain in a lab.

The researchers said that their next goal is to grow a brain to 16 or 20 weeks to allow for expression of the remaining one percent of genes not expressed in the five-week-old brain.

Anand pulled off his unbelievable feat by mimicking the conditions that naturally occur in utero in his lab and 15 weeks later he had grown the equivalent of a 5-week-old fetal human brain.

“We don’t have any sensory stimuli entering the brain”.

‘In central nervous system diseases, this will enable studies of either underlying genetic susceptibility or purely environmental influences, or a combination.

‘Genomic science infers there are up to 600 genes that give rise to autism, but we are stuck there.

“Mathematical correlations and statistical methods are insufficient to in themselves identify causation”. It’s more hard to create a human brain, since it’s much more complex than any other organ, but Anand and his colleagues used a technique in which they differentiated between cells that were intended to become neural tissue, parts of the central nervous system, or other types of tissue in the brain.

Under high-resolution imaging, the organoid reveals functioning neurons, along with exons and dendrites, their signal-carrying extensions.

According to Anand, “If you have an inherited disease, for example, you could give us a sample of skin cells, we could make a brain and then ask what’s going on”. Anand and McKay have let the model continue to grow to the 12-week point, watching the expected maturation changes during that period. “We don’t know yet”, he said. The military is interested in this research for its potential in offering new ways to study Gulf War illness, traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The goal of the brain is to assist researchers in finding cures for numerous diseases like Alzheimer’s, and Autism. Looking ahead, they hope to add a pumping blood system, in order to study stroke therapies.

The highly-anticipated educational tracks for the 2015 R&D 100 Awards & Technology Conference feature 28 sessions, plus keynote speakers Dean Kamen and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason.