Part-human part-mouse brain developed in science breakthrough
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Part-human part-mouse brain developed in science breakthrough
Image source: Getty Images
Image caption: The research has raised questions about what it means to alter the way laboratory animals think and feel.
By Victoria Gill and Kate Stephens, Senior Science Journalist
Published 6 hours ago
Neuroscientists in the US have successfully adapted mice to have functioning human cells inside their own brains. The researchers hope that potential treatments for psychiatric and neurodevelopmental diseases that only occur in humans could now be tested on laboratory rodents.
While mice with brains that are partly human might sound like a Kafkaesque experiment, the scientists said these are not "mice that think like humans." The animals are genetically engineered - and surgically altered - so that some of their brain tissue is human.
The scientists said their work, published in Nature, was carried out with independent ethical scrutiny.
Aim and Methodology
The aim of this ethically complicated breakthrough was to better understand the biology of brain disorders for which there are currently no effective treatments. Some conditions cannot be studied in a mouse because rodents do not develop some of the brain disorders that humans do.
As lead researcher Prof Sergiu Pașca from Stanford University explained, psychiatry has "one of the lowest success rates for clinical trials." He said: "Even drugs that actually make it to clinical trial - that seem to be working really well in animal models - fail dramatically in clinic. That tells us we're missing a lot of information about human biology and capturing that will be essential."
The Stanford researchers believe this new model has the potential to be "transformative" for complex conditions like epilepsy, autism, and cerebral palsy.
Pașca added: "Here we have a new model that allows us to actually capture aspects of human brain function in a way that has not been possible before."
The Research Process
Mice without their 'grey matter': The human brain is made up of billions of cells, interconnected in millions of circuits, making it difficult to understand its development and what exactly happens when things go wrong. While this research is not the first time human neurons have been implanted in laboratory rodents, these scientists took that approach to a new level.
First, they genetically-engineered mice to develop almost none of their own cerebral cortex – that is, the outer layer of the brain sometimes referred to as "grey matter." It handles higher-level thinking, memory, and senses.
The researchers then used skin cells taken from humans and "reprogrammed" them, so they grew into pieces of brain-like tissue called organoids – not whole brains grown in dishes, but collections of connected, living cells.
When these organoids were implanted into the mouse brain, the cells divided and organised themselves into the animal's existing brain circuitry, connecting with the rest of the mouse’s brain and spinal cord.