At Stanford University in California, researchers led by Sergiu Pasca transplanted human brain organoids into the brains of baby rats in such a way that they can integrate into the growing brain and influence the rat’s behavior. The transplanted human brain tissue thus achieves a closer resemblance to the human brain and could be used as a model for brain research in the future.
According to the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, human brain structures cultivated in the laboratory offer promising prospects for brain research. So-called brain organoids allow “new insights into early brain development and into the emergence of neurological and psychiatric diseases,” write the experts: “Brain organoids also enable the investigation of the effects of drugs, toxins, germs or viruses on human brain cells and on brain development.” The Leopoldina does not fundamentally reject the insertion of such brain structures in the brains of living animals.
Agnieszka Rybak-Wolf, Head of the Organoids Technology Platform at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, adds: “The human-rodent chimeras raise some ethical debates about the mixing of human and animal brain tissue, but they are recognized Experiments to demonstrate the functionality of in vitro human brain cells in in vivo circuits.”
Source: Nachrichten
