Scientists use stem cells to make mini-brains

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Is there anything stem cells can't do? Scientists have used these programmable cells to develop beating heart tissue and human bladders, and they're seen as a gateway to curing many medial conditions.

Now, Viennese scientists have successfully grown mini brains using stem cells from human embryos.

The scientists have coined the mini-brains “cerebral organoids” – pea-sized structures that are not actually functioning brains, but brain tissue that resemble brain regions in a nine-week-old human embryonic brain.

The scientific breakthrough could help experts answer important questions about brain development, and potentially lead to new treatments for brain disorders such as schizophrenia or autism.

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Lead study author of the organoids, Madeline Lancaster, and her colleagues have created hundreds of these mini-brains and have identified several key regions of the brain that are evident in this early stage of human development.

These regions include the dorsal cortex, the ventral forebrain, the choroid plexus and regions that resembled the midbrain and hindbrain. But the organoids also lack some features that are evident in a developing embryo such as the cerebellum, which is involved in motor development, and the hippocampus, a seahorse-shaped structure crucial for memory.

The researchers are using these brain-like structures to study a neurodevelopment disease called microcephaly, a disorder where brain size shrinks. The brain region of most interest is the dorsal cortex, the part of the brain most highly impacted by this disease.

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