It’s not the size that matters. Scientists from Singapore have just managed to grow miniature midbrains just as functional as ours. The midbrain, also called the “midbrain”, is a small part of the brain that governs basic functions such as attention, habituation, sleep or waking.
Vision, hearing, body movements: the “middle brain” is a real information highway. In addition, it allows the production of dopamine, a hormone that intervenes, among other things, in our ability to act and to use our motor functions. Low levels of dopamine cause, for example, slow reactions and neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease.
The midbrain is, so to speak, the main center of activity in humans.
“It’s remarkable how well our ‘organoid’ mimics the development of the human midbrain. (…) We will now be able to test how these mini-brains react to existing drugs or new ones even before treating patients, this will change the way we develop drugs a lot”, rejoices Professor Shawn Je, having worked on this project.
A major step forward for Parkinson’s research
The feat of the team of scientists is to have used stem cells to create brain tissue. This allowed the “organoid” to develop normally and mimic the main characteristics of the human midbrain despite being only 2-3mm in size (about 6 times smaller than a real one).
“Considering that one of our biggest challenges in research on Parkinson’s disease is the lack of accessibility to the human brain, we have taken a big step forward. Our “organoids” could quickly replace the animal brains usually used in these types of research. We can now use these cultured brains to improve our understanding and research into this disease, perhaps even others”, concludes Professor Ng Huck Hui, Executive Director at the Institute of Genomics of Singapore (GIS).
Eventually, the studies could be conducted directly in the laboratory rather than going through simulations or animal tests. These miniature brains could be the key to major advances in the search for treatments for the disease, which affects 7 to 10 million people worldwide.
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