Scientists and one of them of Indian root, have developed small 3D ‘Mini-Brains’, which are capable of imitating parts of the human brain’s arrangements and activities and are employed to learn about ailments like autism and Alzheimer’s.
Researchers said that the availability of these ‘mini-brains’ could radically revolutionize the testing of new drugs for efficacy and safety. They added that performing scientific study with these balls of brain cells grow and create brain-like arrangements on their own in eight weeks was better for studying mice and rats as they are obtained from human cells rather than rodents.
The study leader Professor Thomas Hartung at Hopkins University, US said that ninety-five percent of drugs that appear potential when tested in animal specimen fail once they are checked in humans at huge outflow of time and money.
These are adult cells that are genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like condition and then are stimulated to develop into brain cells.
Cells from the skin of many healthy adults were taken up to make the mini-brains, but Mr. Hartung added that cells from group with some genetic peculiarities or some diseases can be used to make brains to study different types of drugs.
These brains are used to study Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and even autism. Mini-brains are really tiny- at 350 micrometers in diameter or like the size of the eye of a housefly and are just detectable by the human eye – and hundreds and thousands of accurate copies are produced in single batch. About one hundred of them can be created in a petri dish in the lab.
Once mini-brains are cultivated for two months, they develop four kinds of neurons and two kinds of support cells- astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, the later is responsible to create myelin, which insulates neuron’s axons and permits them to correspond faster.
Researchers were able to watch the development of myelin and could acknowledge the process to begin covering of the axons. Brains showed natural electrophysiological activity for recording with electrodes, which was identical to the electroencephalogram or the EEG.