DALLAS: A near-complete human brain comparable with that of a five-week-old foetus has been grown in a laboratory dish.
The brain ‘organoid’ was created from reprogramd skin cells and is about the size of a pencil eraser.
US scientists hope the lumpy mass of functioning nerve cells and fibres will prove to be a valuable research tool for non-animal testing of new drugs, and for investigating brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s.
As well as neurons and their signal-carrying projections – axons and dendrites – the ‘brain’ also contains support and immune cells.
It has 99 per cent of the genes present in the foetal brain, a rudimentary spinal cord, and even the beginnings of an ‘eye’.
‘It not only looks like the developing brain, its diverse cell types express nearly all genes like a brain,’ said lead researcher…