First Near-Fully Formed Brain Grown In Lab
Aug-20-2015

Scientists at Ohio State University say they've grown the first near-complete human brain in a lab.

The brain organoid, if licensed for commercial lab use, could help speed research for neurological diseases and disorders, like Alzheimer's and autism, Rene Anand, an Ohio State professor who worked on the project, said in a statement Tuesday.

"We will have [a] more precise prediction of efficacy of therapy and possible side effects before we do clinical trials," Anand told The Huffington Post via email, explaining how his model is a more ethical alternative to trials that use rodent specimens. Anand said reducing the use of animals improves research as they're "not as likely to predict clinical outcomes as human brain models."

The brain, engineered from adult human skin cells and grown in a dish for 15 weeks, is about the size of a pencil eraser, according to the university. It has the maturity of a 5-week-old fetal brain, and contains 99 percent of the genes in a fully developed human fetal brain.

"If we let it go to 16 or 20 weeks, that might complete it, filling in that 1 percent of missing genes," Anand said. "We don't know yet."

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