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Itโs a tiny little thing, no bigger than a pencil eraser and certainly not capable of thinking for itself, but itโs got all the major structuresย and 99 percent of the genes present in the brain of a five-week-old fetus.
In other words, scientists at Ohio State University say, itโs the most complete model of a human brain ever grown in a lab.
If approved for use in research, the tiny organoidย unveiled at theย Military Health System Research Symposium in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. could improve research into a whole host of brain-related illnesses, includingย autism, Parkinsonโs and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Because the process hasnโt been published in an academic study, otherย scientists were hesitant to judge the quality of Rene Anand and Susan McKayโs work.
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But Anand isย hopeful about the modelโs prospects.
โItโs a scalable modelย that can be engineered to carry the genetic variantsย that give rise to all these diseases โฆ and it gives us incredible access to things we never have done before,โย lead researcher Anand told The Washington Post. โWe can screen drugs, we can ask questions, we can follow the development at every stage.โ
โAnd,โ he noted, โwe can do it all in a dish.โ
Read full, original post: Scientists say they’ve grown the world’s most complete petri dish brain
