Human cells implanted in mice to study mental illness

Researchers at Stanford University in the USA An unprecedented transplant of human neurons into the brains of young mice. The purpose of the experiment was to study some complex psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, physiologically, with the possibility of even testing some treatments.

For this, the authors of the study used 3-dimensional mini-models of the human brain, called organoids, a technique that has been developed over the past decade from stem cells to function as a simplified model of the human cortex. This includes connecting and integrating the cortex of each mouse with the surrounding tissue. for the rodent to function as its own brain.

According to the researchers, the biggest challenge in the study of psychiatric diseases in animals is they don’t suffer like humanswhile these, of course, cannot be subjected to specific experiments in vivo,

What happened to the organoids in the rat brains?

Psychiatric diseases are very difficult to study because animals do not suffer from them in the same way as humans who cannot be subjected to in vivo experiments. Also, in cultures of this human brain tissue in Petri dishes, the neurons do not reach their characteristic size in a real human brain.

According to Sergiu Pasca, lead author of the study and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, “we found that by moving 3D organs into baby mouse brains, the organoids can become quite large and vascular.” They came, powered by the little rodent’s blood web. occupies “one-third of the cerebral hemisphere” of each animal.

Finally, the team used “tools” on organoids from patients with a genetic disorder called Timothy syndrome. The result, in the brains of mice, organoids grew more slowly and with less activity than in the brains of healthy patients.

ARTICLE – nature – DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05277-w.