BOSTON: ‘Mini-brains’, the size of a housefly’s eye, are being produced in batches of over a thousand at a time by researchers. The minute models of the brain – tiny collections of cells that are genetically programd to grow into brain cells – are developed from human skin and may end up replacing animals in lab tests of new pharmaceuticals.
Currently most drug tests are carried out upon mice and rats, but ninety-five percent of these potentially promising new products ultimately prove useless when tested upon humans, as our brains do not function in the same way as those of rodents, said the research leader.
The brains are grown in the lab over a period of about two months, one hundred to a petri dish. Although other types of the so-called mini-brains already exist, the research leader says that they often successfully mimic the structure of the human brain but not the manner in which it functions. He also points out that his particular version is the most standardized, and therefore is potentially more useful in obtaining consistent and reliable data in clinical tests of drugs…