It’s a First: Indian Scientists in US Grow a ‘Mini Brain’ in a Lab

It’s as advanced as the brain of a five-week-old fetus. Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve read all day?

Patients may be able to clone their brains one day to test out potential treatments (Photo: iStock)

It’s arguably the most important organ of your body but also a huge mystery.

We still don’t completely understand how brains develop and unfortunately, how they weaken and deteriorate. Part of the reason scientists have had such a hard time unlocking those secrets is because most of those experiments have been on animals and the deceased. Not exactly the best way to understand how our brain works.

But now scientists at the Ohio State University have succeeded in growing an almost fully formed human brain in a lab for the first time ever.

Dr Rene Anand and his team of neuroscientists at the Ohio State University are the first to make the most sophisticated lab-grown brain yet. They made the organ from adult human skin cells converted into pluripotent cells, a type of stem cell that can be programmed into any tissue of the body (Photo courtesy: Ohio State University)

The miniature brain is about the size of a pencil eraser and resembles that of a five-week-old foetus.

Although it is only about the size of a pencil eraser, Ohio State’s brain model is complete with 99% of the cells that would exist in a human fetus, making it the most fully formed brain ever engineered in a lab. It is even complete with its own spinal cord, signalling circuitry and retina which are considered a part of the brain.

What Does it Mean?

Scientists hope their research could one day be used to test drugs for neurological diseases like Alzheimers, autism and brain cancers. (Photo: iStock for representational purposes)

Technically they’re not quite “brains” yet.

They’re called brain organoids, that’s pieces of human tissue grown in petri-dishes from skin cells.

These little blobs of tissue called organoids are fantastic research tools for scientists to try therapies and figure out the best treatment for individual patients as opposed to the ‘one size fits all’ approach.

The idea of taking skin cells, reverting them back to a basic stage of development and teaching them how to turn into the cells that make up the brain is something scientists have been dreaming about for some time.

The mini brains don’t actually think, not yet, but respond to drugs the same way as human brains do.

Frankenstein Coming Soon?

Dr Anand says, the idea behind this effort is to study it and learn more about brains, and not to, say, implant it in a tiny robot or anything nefarious like that. But given the potential of what’s been achieved, we are bound to be neuro-skeptic (Photo: iStock)

As wonderful as these advances are, they are not without ethical concerns. Growing brain cells in the lab is not new. What’s new is the level of precision by which these little organs grew all by themselves in laboratory conditions into the different areas of the brain.

Incredible. But is it ethical?

Right now, it’s just a blob of cells which cannot feel anything but as the research moves forward it will blur the lines between ethics and technology. We might be ages away from developing a complete human brain, but given the level of sophistication achieved by Dr Anand and his team, what if over time, the lab-brain matures further and fills in that one percent of DNA that still differentiates it from the real fetal brain?

Theoretically, this research could lead to a future with artificially intelligent machines that have human-like brains. All that is required is for some scientists to figure out how to put a brain into a robot that has sensory input. That will be a whole different story. We might be talking about science fiction, but it’s not very far away at all.

PS: As you read this, scientists are growing blood vessels, veins, heart tissues and cartilage, tiny livers and lungs. That’s right folks! The future has arrived!

Also Read: We’ll Soon Be Growing Human Organs on a Farm!