Mice with Human Brain Cells Offer a Tool to Study Disease. Ethicists Ask: What's Next?
- On Wednesday, Stanford University neuroscientists published a study in Nature describing a new method for growing human brain organoids inside genetically engineered mice.
- Previous attempts failed because rodent cells outcompeted human grafts; neuroscientist Sergiu Pașca and his Stanford University team solved this by engineering mice lacking specific cerebral cortex and hippocampus structures.
- In 25 of 29 attempts, human tissue filled more than 90% of the vacant space, forming specialized neurons including rare von Economo cells never before grown in a dish.
- These chimeric animals provide a platform to study cerebral palsy and frontotemporal dementia; Pașca noted human cortical cells appear to restore lost functions in the grafted mice.
- Experts like Nita Farahany of Duke Law emphasize ethical caution as the team deliberately halted experiments before human cells formed consciousness markers, noting this work "brings us into new gray areas.
33 Articles
33 Articles
Map of the estimated pathways of nerve fibers in the brain of a S. Pasca lab rat, Stanford Universit A group of American scientists achieved something that, until recently, seemed to belong to the script of a science fiction film: creating live mice in which much of the brain is formed by human neurons. Animals can walk, eat, explore the environment and perform tasks like other mice. And this detail is important: they continue to behave essentia…
Human brain cells have been transplanted into mice and they are observing how disease processes are expressed in human brain tissue.
Stanford scientists have successfully grown human cortical tissue inside mice. The tissue integrated into the nervous system and became active, opening the way for the study of neurological diseases.
An American team managed to colonize the encephalus of cortex-free rodents with human organoids, with the aim of having more realistic models of neurodevelopmental diseases. A technical prowess that raises ethical questions.
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