Nearly complete brain grown in US lab

WASHINGTON:

An almost complete version of a tiny human brain has been grown in a US lab in a move that could bring major strides to the treatment of neurological diseases, a scientist says.

Rene Anand, a professor at Ohio State University, has grown in a dish a brain equal in maturity to that of a five-week-old fetus, his university reported. “It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain,” Anand said.

Around the size of a pea, the brain in a lab dish includes multiple cell types, all major regions of the brain and a spinal cord, but lacks a vascular system, the university said. It was grown from human skin cells and is claimed to be the most complete brain of its type grown yet.

Anand expects the grown brain will allow easier and more ethical testing of drugs’ effects on the mind. It could also be a boon for general neuroscience research as the brain allows a hands-on approach to genome studies rather than computer models currently used.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2015.