Miniature human brains with their own blood vessels have been grown in the lab for the first time. The achievement could enable researchers to grow bigger organoids to better help us study and understand how the brain works.
Organoids are small, 3D clumps of tissue that behave more naturally in the lab than traditional, flat cell cultures. Researchers use human brain organoids to explore how parts of our brain develop, but these seldom reach more than 2 millimetres in width because they have to be fed from the outside by a liquid containing growth factors and nutrients. If the organoids get too big, the centre dies, because not enough nutrients can reach them through diffusion, says of the University of California at Davis.
To overcome this, Waldau and his colleagues have created human mini-brains that are infiltrated with human blood vessels. Both the brain and the blood vessel tissue was grown from cells taken from the dura tissue that lines the brain, donated by a person undergoing a routine operation. By exposing cells to different chemical cocktails in the lab, the team encouraged some to become brain organoids, and others to become blood vessel cells.
Advertisement
After a month, Waldau coated the brain organoids with a gel containing blood vessel cells. A month later, blood vessels had grown into the centre of the organoids.
The next step is to see if this will enable brain organoids to grow bigger. The work could ultimately lead to ways to treat brain injuries, but this is still a long way off, says Waldau.
NeuroReport
Read more: Ten connected miniature organs are best human-on-a-chip yet
